Cord blood banking: Charitable, clinical and commercial

Bobby and I attended the first London Regenerative Medicine Network (LRMN) event of 2012 yesterday (25^th January) which attracted a huge audience. It was, quite literally, standing room only. There were 3 key speakers focusing on the somewhat controversial subject of Cord Blood.

Before the main event, however, there was a brief presentation by Professor Sara Rankin, Professor of Leukocyte & Stem Cell Biology of Imperial College, London with the interesting title “Putting the Tooth Fairy out of Business: Children get their teeth into science”. Professor Rankin is collaborating with the artist, Gina Czarnecki, in order to raise public awareness about adult stem cells and they have come up with an ingenious idea to get children involved. Children are being asked to donate a milk tooth to help build a palace. In return they are given a token tooth to leave under the pillow for the tooth fairy. The resulting piece of artwork is a clear resin fantasy palace embedded with thousands of milk teeth and it continues to be added to. It’s currently showing in Liverpool and in April it can be seen at the Science Museum in London.

Guy Parkes of the Anthony Nolan Trust next spoke about the organisation’s Cord Blood Programme, its history, developments and trends. I was surprised to learn that they’ve been operating for 36 years. Public perception is that stem cell treatments are ‘new’! They started out being the first to have an unrelated bone marrow donor register and are now leaders in the field of tissue type analysis, research and tissue transplant technology. In the past year, they have started to supply cord blood units for clinical transplants as well as for a range of research projects. Their key focus now is to accelerate the growth of the UK’s own cord blood units. Interestingly the majority of cord blood units are imported from overseas and cost the NHS around Ј36,000.00 per unit. The Anthony Nolan Trust, however, can provide UK sourced cord blood units for just under Ј15,000.00 per unit. This is a significant saving especially bearing in mind the financial crisis the NHS now faces.

Dr Rachael Hough is a consultant in Haematology and Stem Cell Transplantation at UCL Hospitals. She has established, and chairs, the BSBMT Umbilical Cord Blood Working Group and is the Chief Investigator of the two NCRI-badged national cord blood transplant protocols. She provided an insight into the use of cord blood in her clinic. She mentioned the different sources of stem cells which included cord blood and also, the even more controversial “saviour sibling” where parents conceive a child in order to “save” the life of their other child.

Later, I was amazed to learn that if you are a white caucasian you have a 90% chance of a successful match to unrelated cord blood cells. If, however, you are of mixed race this success rate plummets to just 10%. This emphasises the need to obtain more mixed race units. Because there has been no cohesive thinking about cord blood, Dr Hough has taken it upon herself to set up a working group with the aim of “getting people excited about this”. Another interesting statistic is that a blood transplant in the UK costs in the region of Ј150,000.00 plus the cost of the cord blood itself. She did mention that in some cases, transplants are not allowed to go ahead because they are deemed to be too expensive. More controversy!

The last speaker was Dr Rajan Jethwa, from the Virgin Health Bank and the common theme during his presentation was the word “free”! This was actually to support their image of being a “social enterprise”. It’s strategically clever because to be a social enterprise is “the only way private business can be accepted as a healthcare provider within the NHS environment”. So a few statistics: for Ј1,195.00 a Member of the Public donates 80% of the cord blood to a public bank. This is enough for one adult transplant and is provided free to the NHS hospital. The first 5ml of cord blood, however, is stored on behalf of the family with the Virgin Health Bank for a 25 year term which can be used by the family if needed. All profits made by the Virgin Health Bank are donated to stem cell initiatives.

The ‘big news’ of the evening was the announcement by Dr Jethwa that Virgin Health Bank had established a long term partnership with the Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. This partnership is to accelerate the development and availability of stem cell transplants and it is hoped that it will demonstrate what can be achieved via a collaboration between the private and public sectors. Another objective is to increase availability of cord blood cells and thereby reduce the currently high costs of transplants.

Here at Global Regulatory Services we are particularly pleased with this announcement as, yet again, it showcases Cambridge (UK) as being a centre of innovation and excellence. We are delighted to be located right in the middle of all these exciting scientific advances and to be part of what is affectionately called the “Cambridge Phenomenon”.

The evening proved to be another high calibre event successfully managed by the LRMN team. Our thanks go to Dr Emily Culme-Seymour and Professor Chris Mason in being instrumental in making these events possible. Thanks also to Macopharma who were the corporate sponsors.

Author: Greer Deal, Director of Global Regulatory Services (GRS)