Lean on Me
The Sibling Connection provides families with the chance for a transplant
Kate Falcon thought she had her career mapped out. In 2001, she had just completed her master's degree in Women's Health Nursing and was working as a labor and delivery nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital. It was there that she began noticing an interesting trend. Expecting parents, many from the medical and scientific fields, were coming to the hospital with cord blood collection kits. "I had a kind of 'aha' moment," says Kate. "These parents were so enthusiastic about collecting their baby's cord blood, and I didn't really understand it. I told my manager, 'We need to learn more about this.'" She asked ViaCord to come and speak.
Kate made sure she was ready for the visit. She studied up on cord blood banking and "the more I learned, the more I wanted to know." She had "17 gazillion questions" for the ViaCord team, so they invited her back to ViaCord's headquarters to learn more. The rest, as they say, is history.
Today, Kate Falcon is the clinical manager for ViaCord who coordinates all cord blood units that leave ViaCord for transplantation. As part of her role, she also manages the Sibling Connection program, a unique partnership between ViaCord and the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). The Sibling Connection provides ViaCord's cord blood collection and storage for five years at no cost to expecting parents who have a child who may be in need of umbilical cord blood stem cell transplantation.
"The program means a lot to me and the ViaCord team. We believe that if expecting families have a child with a disease that can be treated with cord blood, they absolutely should have the ability to collect and store that cord blood – regardless of their financial situation."
What is the connection between siblings?
Since the beginning of humankind, parents have been continually surprised by the fact their children are often completely different, in everything from personality to looks. However, their cord blood can be very similar. In fact, cord blood from a sibling provides a one-in-four chance of being a perfect match and a 50 percent chance of a partial match, which is adequate to be considered for transplant.
With matching related cord blood stem cells, there are proven clinical benefits. Without it, a patient would have to search for a related donor for bone marrow. If no related match is found, then they would have to look through public banks and the bone marrow registry for an unrelated donor of cord blood or bone marrow. The process can be time-consuming, costly, and can frequently result in no adequate match for transplantation.
The CHORI/ViaCord partnership benefits all ViaCord families
ViaCord has always managed its own case-of-need program. Likewise, CHORI, a world-renowned research hospital, also managed its own case-of-need program that it established in 1999. But in 2006, when CHORI was seeking a partner to help families with children who could benefit from a cord blood stem cell transplant, they turned to ViaCord. "CHORI visited our Processing Lab to learn firsthand how we collect, process, and store cord blood," says Kate. "We were thrilled they chose to partner with us because they believed that our collection process and advanced cryo-preservation lab best supported their goal – to provide the highest quality cord blood unit for transplant so that the patient receiving the cord blood has the best possible outcome."
Combined, ViaCord and CHORI have already released more than 120 family-related cord blood stem cell units for transplantation. Part of Kate's role in coordinating transplantation is to follow medical data on the patient for five years post-cord blood transplant.
"The Sibling Connection program is meaningful for all our ViaCord families," explains Kate. "Data from this program validates that ViaCord's collection and storage process provides a quality product. That means that should your child or family member ever need a transplant, you feel confident that the cord blood unit stored at ViaCord will be of the highest quality."
A grassroots movement that is saving lives
It wasn't even a decade ago that Kate Falcon was helping mothers experience the gift of life through labor and delivery. Today, she's helping families experience a different kind of gift, one that potentially gives life again. And while Kate couldn't have imagined this career change ten years ago ("I always thought I'd be delivering babies", she admits), she has real hopes and dreams for the next ten years of her career.
"There are so many exciting trends happening with cord blood. For starters, with hemoglobin disorders, such as sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia, it is common practice to reserve stem cell transplant as a last line of defense, when a child is very sick and other treatments are exhausted. Today, because of the increase in clinical experience doing cord blood stem cell transplants and increasingly favorable outcomes, doctors are considering them earlier and starting discussions with families earlier. And preliminary research is showing that the younger the child is transplanted, the better the results."
Kate is also excited that there is greater awareness about cord blood banking now compared to when she first contacted ViaCord in 2001. "More people know about cord blood banking, and it's a grassroots movement. Expecting families are hearing about it through their friends and family. And with more transplants happening, there is also more media coverage. People feel empowered to become more educated and make a decision that's right for their family. Parents are starting to understand how valuable that one opportunity is to collect their baby's cord blood."