"Dr. Slichter told us an interesting story that all began from the research of Dr. Judith Pool (1919—1975). In 1964, she developed cryoprecipitation, a way to produce concentrated amounts of antihemophilic factor. Dr. Pool determined that, if frozen plasma was thawed in an icebox at 4°C, a cryoprecipitate formed. This cryoprecipitate contained the majority of the factor VIII present in the plasma. (Dr. Pool published the procedure in Nature in 1964, and she published a similar article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1965.)

Puget Sound Blood Center recognized Dr. Pool's work and incorporated the process soon after. Dr. Richard Counts refined the procedure, and he adapted it to enable production from nearly half of the blood collected with a high yield of factor VIII. At that time, PSBC prepared up to 50,000 units of cryoprecipitate every year. During the 1970s and 1980s, including the years when blood was potentially contaminated with the HIV virus, Dr. Counts and Dr. Thompson used cryoprecipitate exclusively to treat hemophilia A patients, because small pools of individual units of cryoprecipitate would limit patients' exposure to a relatively small number of volunteer donors. The doctors also established a statewide hemophilia care program over thirty-five years ago. It provided care for patients with hemophilia throughout Washington and in neighboring areas of Alaska, Idaho, and Montana.

Commercially available factor VIII products were prepared from pools of plasma obtained from up to thousands of donors per lot. But Dr. Counts and Dr. Thompson continued to use, almost exclusively, cryoprecipitate prepared from the normal volunteer donors in Seattle. Not only was cryoprecipitate less expensive than the commercially available factor VIII product, but it made better use of each donor's gift of blood. And, what was especially important was that patients receiving cryoprecipitate were exposed to many fewer donors than if they had received commercially prepared factor VIII products. Because blood donors were never paid for their donation—in contrast to paid plasma donors—the incidence of infectious agents was expected to be less. This was because of the often different lifestyles of volunteer blood donors versus paid plasma donors.

The decision of PSBC's Dr. Counts and Dr. Thompson to continue using cryoprecipitate as the treatment of choice for patients with hemophilia turned out to be lifesaving for many area patients. In other areas of the country, some researchers found 90 percent were infected with HIV after exposure to concentrate, though the PSBC method using cryoprecipitate treatments was about 15 percent of the national "average."⁽¹⁾

As a result of the significant work of Dr. Counts and Dr. Thompson, Dr. Slichter concluded, many patients with hemophilia are still alive and leading productive lives. In fact, PSBC's Hemophilia Care Program now supports over a thousand people with congenital bleeding disorders and their families throughout Washington State. It's considered among our nation's leading hemophilia care programs. This is largely due to its professional clinical staff and integrated research programs supported by PSBC.

In her speech, Dr. Slichter said that Dr. Thompson is considered a leader in what's called "from the bench to the bedside," meaning from their research laboratory bench to their patient's hospital bed. After dedicating thirty-five years to people with bleeding disorders, Dr. Thompson still hopes to work with the World Federation of Hemophilia (WFH) and other organizations dedicated to improving the lives of people with hemophilia in developing countries."

Dr. Thompson Laboratory, Puget Sound Blood Center

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(1) Gjerset G. F., M. J. Clements, R. B. Counts, A. S. Halvorsen, and A. R. Thompson.