How stem cells from umbilical cord blood donations can save a life: HealthLink

SEATTLE — What would normally would be tossed out as medical waste after childbirth, has the potential to save a life. That was the case for a Seattle woman.

“I started having what felt like asthma attacks,” said Alexes Harris.

Harris is a professor of sociology at the University of Washington. Asthma was just one of the symptoms she felt in 2015 and in 2016, after she got a bone marrow biopsy, she was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer.

“It was MDS. It was aggressive, life-threatening, 18 to 24 months to live,” Harris said.

As a mother of two children, the news was devastating.

“When you’re faced with death, any time with your kids, matters,” Harris said.

Harris immediately turned to treatment options. A search in a database for a bone marrow transplant showed no matches, not even with her twin brother. For Harris, whose father was Black and Filipino, and her mother, who was white, finding a match was a challenge.

“We are so underrepresented on the bone marrow registry. Us being African American, Asian American, Native American, Latinx, and then if you have any intersections of those identities, we have a very low likelihood of finding matches, something like 20 to 30 percent,” Harris said.

Harris’ doctor then suggested an alternative: a transplant using stem cells obtained from umbilical cord blood.

“It literally saved my life,” Harris said.

When a baby is born, the umbilical cord that connects a baby to the mother’s placenta is clamped and then cut. From a cord blood donation, the blood is collected from the severed cord then tested, saved, and cryogenically preserved to collect the stem cells.

Those cells are then used for treating more than 70 different conditions such as blood disorders and leukemia.

“It really does not impact the mom or baby at all,” Harris said.

Evan Delay is a former labor and delivery nurse and works at Bloodworks Northwest, a nonprofit blood bank. Delay donated her and her baby’s cord blood when her baby was born this year.

For Delay, the decision to donate it was a no-brainer.

“It’s such a simple thing you can do to potentially save a life, with something you would otherwise dispose of as medical waste. You’re basically turning trash into a life-saving treatment,” Delay said.

Delay says the donation is confidential.

For Harris, she knows she can’t find out who donated their cord blood for her stem cell transplant but she compares the donor mom and baby, to a hero.

“What better way to start the first day of your child’s life than to have them be your superhero and save somebody else’s life?” Harris said.

Harris says she is now seven years in remission.