Scientists at the New York Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program developed the concept of a full-service public bank of frozen, ready-to-use cord blood units donated by delivering mothers for use by any patient who might need a stem cell transplant.

A brief overview of our Milestones includes:

1989

-Drs. Pablo Rubinstein and Cladd E. Stevens of the New York Blood Center present the original concept of public cord blood banking to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Their proposal is to assess the practical feasibility of banking donated cord blood as an alternative source of hematopoietic (blood-forming) stem cells and to investigate its efficacy for bone marrow restoration in unrelated patient recipients.

1992

-The New York Blood Center (NYBC) receives a three-year grant from NHLBI (HL 48031), establishing the first Program for public cord blood banking.

1993

- The Program's first cord blood collection site opens in February at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. (Collections moved to Brooklyn Hospital Center in 1997, increasing donations from ethnic minority mothers)

- NYBC's new Program provides the first two unrelated cord blood units from its public inventory ever to be used for transplant The cord blood transplants are performed on two pediatric patients by Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg at Duke University Hospital in August and September. These two cases are reported at an international transplant meeting in November and are published later in 1994.

1995

- Dr. Rubinstein and colleagues report the development of a process for reducing the volume of cord blood units with minimal loss of hematopoietic cells, allowing more than a five-fold reduction in storage space and making the development of large inventories feasible.

1996

-The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) grants the Program the first Investigational New Drug (IND) exemption to collect, process, store and provide cord blood as a stem cell source in clinical transplantation.

-Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg (with Drs. Rubinstein and Stevens) reports the results of unrelated cord blood transplantation in her first 25 patients, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

1998

-An analysis of results from the Program's first 562 transplant recipients is published in the November 26th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. The landmark study confirms the overall usefulness of cord blood transplantation and shows that the effectiveness of cord blood transplants depends, in part, on the cell dose and the degree of matching for HLA antigens between the patient and the cord blood unit

1999

- The Program's second cord blood collection site opens at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, Long Island.

-The Program implements freezing and storage of cord blood units in robotic freezers (BioArchive™, developed by ThermoGenesis Corporation with the help and advice of NCBP staff).

-The 1,000th patient receives a transplant using a matching cord blood unit from the Program's public inventory.

2000

-The Starr Foundation grants the NY Blood Center's public cord blood banking Program $2 million over two years.

2001

-In response to the evidence that patient survival improves significantly with improved tissue matching and larger cell doses, the NYBC begins to expand its Program by adding new collaborating hospitals for cord blood collection. The Program's goal is to achieve an ethnically diverse inventory of 60,000- 75,000 large, high-quality cord blood units. The expanded Program is renamed the New York Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program (NCBP).

- NCBP's third and fourth cord blood collection sites open at Inova-Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia and New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

- Mary Horowitz, M.D., Scientific Director of the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry (IBMTR), in collaboration with NCBP scientists, presents the following data from an IBMTR-NCBP collaboration at the December 2001 meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH): "A comparison of unrelated transplantation with cord blood and bone marrow in children under age 16 with leukemia or myelodysplasia." The study shows that cord blood transplants with a 5/6 match or better (HLA-A, -B, DRB1) had outcomes as good as those of fully-matched bone marrow recipients.

-NCBP provides raw data to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the first 562 patients receiving cord blood from the Program's public inventory to help develop guidelines for licensure of cord blood banking for clinical transplantation.

2002

-The Starr Foundation makes a second grant of $5 million over two years to the NYBC's National Cord Blood Program.

2003

- Dr. Rubinstein presents data on the outcome of transplants with NCBP cord blood units to a U.S. FDA advisory panel considering cord blood licensure.

- In February, the 20,000th mother donates her baby's cord blood to the NCBP.

-On June 6th, the New York Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program receives NetCord-FACT (Foundation for Accreditation of Cell Therapy) accreditation, becoming the first cord blood bank to be certified for compliance with the Netcord-FACT Standards.

- Mary Laughlin, M.D., Case Western University, presents data from an IBMTR-NCBP collaboration comparing unrelated cord blood transplants in adults at the December ASH meeting. The data shows that there were no significant differences in the outcomes in patients given cord blood units with one, two or more HLA mismatches as compared with bone marrow transplants with one mismatch. Patients given fully matched (6/6) bone marrow from unrelated donors (so-called "MUD" transplants) did better. There were too few adult cord blood recipients of fully-matched cord blood for valid comparisons.

-The National Cord Blood Program celebrates its Tenth Anniversary, along with Mitch Santana, the longest surviving recipient of an unrelated cord blood transplant in the world. [See Mitch's story in Patients and Outcomes.]

-The Cord Blood Stem Cell Act of 2003 is drafted. The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate introduce legislation to fund building a public inventory of 150,000 high quality, ethnically diverse cord blood units for transplantation to unrelated recipients. The legislation would create a network of public banks meeting the highest collection and preservation standards. The New York Blood Center's NCBP Directors, along with the ThermoGenesis Corporation worked with legislators for more than a year to help develop this legislation. Dr. Rubinstein (NCBP), Dr. Kurtzberg (Duke University), NCBP cord blood recipients Stephen Sprague and Keone Penn, along with Steve Barsh, whose son, Spencer, was a cord blood recipient, testify on behalf of the legislation at a Senate Subcommittee hearing chaired by Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS). Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) subsequently initiates a $10 million appropriation to jump-start the legislation.

-Howard P. Milstein, Chair of the New York Blood Center Board of Trustees, pledges $1 million to the National Cord Blood Program.

-The F.M. Kirby Foundation, Inc. makes a $100,000 grant to develop a Website for the NCBP.

2004

- NCBP's fifth cord blood collection site opens at MacDonald Hospital for Women, University Hospitals of Cleveland, Ohio.

-The NY Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program holds its first Physicians' Symposium (May) and Patient Workshop (October) on cord blood as an alternative to bone marrow for stem cell transplant.

- In March, the 1,500th patient receives a cord blood transplant with a NCBP unit.

-In April, at the request of Congress, the Institute of Medicine (IoM) issues a detailed report and recommendations regarding the possible structure and function of a National Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Program.

-In June, the 25,000th mother donates her baby's cord blood to the NCBP.

-The November 25, 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine contains four encouraging articles about cord blood and its significance for adult transplant patients. (See NCBP Homepage/NewsBox for more information)

2005

-In September, the 30,000th mother donates her baby's cord blood to the NCBP and the 2,000th patient receives a cord blood transplant with a matched NCBP unit.

-In October, NCBP's sixth cord blood collection site opens at Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY.

-In November, the NY Blood Center's National Cord Blood program joins our international colleagues in celebrating the recognition of the 10 millionth volunteer stem cell donor worldwide. These include both potential bone marrow donors as well as donated cord blood units already collected in public inventories around the world. Together, these registries, including NCBP, have provided matching stem cells to over 55,000 patients in desperate need of transplant. (See NCBP Homepage/NewsBox for more information)

-On December 20th, President Bush signs the "Stem Cell Therapeutic and Research Act of 2005," passed earlier by unanimous votes in both the US House and Senate. This legislation authorizes $79M in new federal funding to establish a public cord blood banking network. (See NCBP Homepage/NewsBox for more information)