The Northwest Tissue Services’s partnership with the Hawaii Cord Blood Bank has been mutually beneficial since it was established in 1998, and has resulted in ground-breaking research that may change the way the nation’s cord blood banks operate.

Cord Blood Program researchers collaborated with their Hawaii counterparts to create a collection and storage model that may reduce costs and increase genetic diversity in the overall cord blood supply. Hawaii’s location and large Asian population provided ideal conditions for the four-year study.

Published in the January issue of the journal, Transfusion, the study demonstrates the feasibility of long-distance umbilical cord blood banking – a critical finding as cord blood banks around the country investigate ways to increase ethnic diversity in the supply. By involving many sites in collecting units — some thousands of miles away — and then centralizing the processing, unit qualification and registration, storage, and distribution functions, the Cord Blood Program increased efficiencies and controlled costs.

With increasing demand for stem cells, the study results may help by providing a cost-effective model that will also aid in the standardization of procedures for collecting and banking cord blood, a relatively new and rapidly developing source of stem cells.

And that’s not the only significant news. Common methods of collecting cord blood are expensive and require specially trained cord blood processing technicians to be in the delivery room. The Tissue Services’s Cord Blood Program partners with already-present obstetrical staff that reliably collect the cord blood. Such a model requires not only the support of donors in the community, but also that of local obstetric providers and hospital staff.

These long-distance and local partnerships have resulted in the Cord Blood Program’s recognition by transplant centers around the country as a source of useable stem cells for treatment of leukemia and other diseases or syndromes, and as a resource as the science evolves.