
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, November 20, 1993                   TAG: 9311200098
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: PITTSBURGH                                LENGTH: Medium

BIRTH BLOOD PROGRAM INITIATED PRODUCTS FROZEN FOR TREATMENT USE

New parents now can pay to preserve the rich blood from the placenta and umbilical cord to be used instead of a bone-marrow transplant if their child develops leukemia or some other disease.

About a half cup of blood from the afterbirth will be frozen at a blood bank for up to 10 years through a service being offered by Magee-Women's Hospital in conjunction with a Connecticut medical research company.

Scientists believe afterbirth blood, known as cord blood, is as effective as bone marrow transplants in fighting blood and immune-system diseases.

The blood, typically thrown away with the afterbirth, looks like other blood, but contains more blood-producing stem cells. A sick child would receive a transfusion of his own afterbirth blood, which would move into his bone marrow and replace diseased cells.

Bone-marrow transplants, a widely used therapy against leukemia, are more costly, time-consuming and painful than the cord-blood technique.

The commercial program in Pittsburgh began this week with an unidentified mother. Each treatment costs $1,500 plus $75 for each year of storage.

Physicians have privately arranged to store afterbirth blood in special cases for several years. The New York Blood Center in New York City has 1,200 samples of afterbirth blood as part of a federal research project.

Storing cord blood can be an important safeguard in families with histories of leukemia, anemia, genetic disorders or immune deficiencies, said Kenneth Moch, president of Biocyte Corp. of Stamford, Conn.

Biocyte will offer the service to patients of other Northeastern hospitals next year, Moch said.

Cord blood from his brother prolonged the life of 3-year-old Pike Fary of Williamsburg, Va., who was diagnosed in 1991 with acute myeloid leukemia, a persistent form of leukemia.

The Farys were expecting a second child when Dr. Hal E. Broxmeyer of Indiana University told them about the cord-blood therapy he helped pioneer.

Pike received an intravenous infusion of cells from his newborn brother's cord blood in 1992 at the University of Minnesota. His cancer remains in remission, said Dr. John Wagner, who performed the transplant.

by CNB