Medical College of Wisconsin secures key contract fr...( The Medical College of Wisconsin Milw...),Health

The Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, announced that the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR) has been awarded the Stem Cell Therapeutic Outcomes Database contract by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). The CIBMTR is a research partnership formed through an affiliation of the College's International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry and the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). As part of the application process for the contract, the CIBMTR worked closely with many leaders in the field, including the American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation.

Under HRSA's C.W. Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program enacted by Congress in 2005, the CIBMTR will collect and maintain a standardized database of allogeneic (related and unrelated donor) marrow and cord blood transplants performed in the United States; the program now requires that all U.S. transplant centers performing these transplants provide patient outcomes data to this new national Stem Cell Therapeutic Outcomes Database. The database will contain critical information to continually evaluate the program's operations and the status of transplant recipients. Estimated funding for the first two-year period of this contract is $6 million with an additional four years of negotiable funding.

"The Outcomes Database will provide physicians, scientists, policy makers and patients with the information they need to make the best possible clinical decisions and to advance the field," said Mary Horowitz, M.D., chief scientific director of the CIBMTR and the Robert A. Uihlein, Jr., Professor of Hematologic Research at the Medical College. "The goal is to make blood and marrow transplants available to all who need them and to increase their safety and effectiveness."

Since 1972, the CIBMTR has collected retrospective outcomes data provided voluntarily by transplant centers worldwide on both allogeneic and autologous (patien
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Contact: Toranj Marphetia
toranj@mcw.edu
414-456-4744
Medical College of Wisconsin
29-Sep-2006