Cord Blood Bank at King Faisal Hospital and Research Centre
Hind Al-Humaidan, MD, FRCPA
Consultant, Hematopathologist
Director, Blood Bank and Transfusion Medicine and Cord Blood Bank
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre
Abstract
Haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation is the standard therapy for many cancers that originate in the blood and bone marrow. Reconstitution of the bone marrow is an important and potentially curative treatment option for a wide variety of malignant and non-malignant diseases, including acute and chronic leukemia, lymphoma, aplastic anemia, sickle cell anemia, thalassemia major, and a number of other genetic and acquired disorders. The pluripotent hematopoietic stem cells required for this procedure are usually obtained from the bone marrow or peripheral blood of an allogeneic (non-self) related or unrelated donor. In some situations, where extensive myeloablative chemotherapy is required to treat a malignancy not involving the bone marrow, autologous (self) stem cells may be used.
Engraftment and survival rates following hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) are optimized when the donor and recipient are genetically compatible. Many studies have shown that the risk of graft versus host disease (GVHD) correlative with the level of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) disparity.
Unfortunately, finding a HLA-matched donor is not always possible. While autologous hematopoietic stem cells provide perfectly compatible tissue, this type of transplantation is not appropriate in many cases, due to the presence of the disease to be treated in the collected autologous stem cells. Each full sibling potential donor has only a 25 percent chance of being fully HLA matched with a sibling requiring a transplant.
When a suitable related donor is not available, a search is conducted to identify a potential unrelated HLA-matched donor. Finding an appropriate donor through a national registry is a lengthy process that is not always successful especially for individuals who are not of Northern European descent. As a result many patients who might benefit from HCT are not afforded this opportunity or die during the extended process of securing a donor.
Therefore, the need came to start a public Cord Blood Bank is Saudi Arabia under the umbrella of King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre to offer another source of HCT for Saudi patients. We then developed our Plan of Action to achieve the goals. We set up an Obstetric Unit for Cord Blood donation within Al-Yamama Maternal and Children Hospital where we are collecting till now.
The King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center Cord Blood Bank is a non-profit public cord blood bank dedicated to make high quality cord blood units available to all patients in need of related and /or unrelated transplantation in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and in the neighboring countries through the development and maintenance of a center of excellence for the collection, storage, search and distribution of ethnically and racially diverse cord blood units.
Additionally, the mission of the cord blood bank is also to educate both the medical community and the public to the value of cord blood donation, collection and cryopreservation, and increase the awareness of the importance of cord blood banking.
So far, our Inventory is more than 1700 Cord Blood units stored and ready for use. We transplanted successfully 14 Cord Bloods from our Blood Bank inventory.