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Cord blood

This topic has 3 replies, 1 voice, and was last updated 18 years, 5 months ago by SimonChai.

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November 5, 2005 at 4:12 pm #9780

SimonChai
Member

Hi, everyone. Has anyone on this list had a cord blood transplant or researched one? My transplant search coordinator at Fred Hutch is very pessimistic about finding a blood cell or marrow donor for me and it looks like my new best option is a cord blood transplant. I feel like I’ve had the rug pulled out from under me because I had decided to go to Hutch for my transplant. Unfortunately, Hutch can’t start doing them until the end of the year, at the soonest, and I am worried that’s too late. Little did I know finding a donor was going to be so tough. Any recommendations on cord blood transplants? Thank you everyone!

November 5, 2005 at 5:28 pm #9781

sarah
Member

Simon, The Hutch has been searching past 3 years for Charlie a match. To date nothing has come close. Our transplant coordinator at Hutch recommended about 4 months ago we needed to pursue cord blood. She actually ran search and found 2 matches 4of6 for him. She recommended University of Minnesota. We had a consultation with transplant Dr there 3 weeks ago. My husband will be starting chemo in North carolina next week possibly to gets blasts count down. Will be in hospital 4 weeks. After that we are flying to Minnesota for a 4 month stay. I took a leave of absence from work 2 weeks ago. I plan to stay with him the whole time. My husbands marrow has become extensively fibrous which concerns the Dr with engraftment. We are hoping to proceed , the sooner the better.

November 8, 2005 at 4:55 am #9782

dusty
Member

We also toured the facilities at U of Minn at Fairview. We found them to be warm, friendly, competent and very organized. We were seeking a cord blood transplant as Betty was not able to tolerate chemo very well, and we did not have a related donor. With cord blood, there are some advantages in that you may only need an HLA match of 3 or 4 out of 6, versus 6 out of six for MUD. We were looking at a partially ablative transplant. The concept is that once the stem cells engraft, they will produce enough antibodies to fight off new leukemic cells as they develop. Unfortunately in our case, Betty was not able to get into remission, so we were not able to proceed with the transplant.

Here are some links to some cord blood sites:
Good Luck and stay strong.
Don
http://www.nationalcordbloodprogram.org
http://www.nationalcordbloodprogram.org/about/program_overview.html
http://www.cancer.umn.edu/page/research/trsplant/cord11.html

http://www.cancer.umn.edu/page/research/trsplant/cord1.html#family

November 8, 2005 at 6:10 am #9783

SimonChai
Member

Thanks , Don and Sarah. My local doctor seems to favor my waiting to go to Hutch, but I’m not sure I should wait that long.

We’re doing another bone marrow biopsy tomorrow to find out exactly how urgent things are and if I need to try to get in to U of Minnesota or somewhere else like Robert Wood Johnson.

I’m also having my first transfusion tomorrow. Yikes. Thank you both for your info and kind wishes.
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