"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."
