The relatively new procedure of transplanting umbilical cord blood is getting attention from the National Institutes of Health.
The NIH is trying to collect 15,000 units of donated umbilical cord blood at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, Duke University in Durham, N.C., and the University of California, Los Angeles, for "studies to determine which diseases and which patients it best helps," the Associated Press said on August 22. The NIH also wants to encourage mothers to donate their babies' cord blood to banks from which it could then be distributed to unrelated, sick patients.
The Associated Press carried a human interest story on the same day focusing on a six-year-old California boy who is undergoing cord blood transplants at Georgetown to help him fight chronic granulomatous disease (CGD). Physicians expect to know in September if the procedure worked. The hope is that the stem cells in the cord blood will help the boy's bone marrow to produce healthy white blood cells and cure his CGD. The boy developed his first CGD-related infection when he was 18 months old, but the disease was not diagnosed until a year later. He was given gamma-interferon and antibiotics, but the drugs slowly became ineffective.
In a related story, the British Broadcasting Corporation reported on August 13 that a two-year-old boy with chronic myeloid leukemia has become the first child in Britain to receive an umbilical cord transplant from an unrelated baby. The boy received the blood from a newborn American baby after chemotherapy did not work and his physicians decided he did not have time to wait for a bone marrow transplant. "Doctors say there are early signs that the transplant has taken," the BBC said.
According to the BBC, three cord blood banks have already been established in Britain and others are in the works.
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