The Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy has awarded a three-year accreditation to the Blood and Marrow Transplantation Program of Mayo Clinic, Nemours Children's Clinic and Wolfson Children's Hospital. The foundation awarded the accreditation after thorough site visits at all collection, transplantation and laboratory facilities at Mayo Clinic, Nemours Children's Clinic and Wolfson Children's Hospital.

"This is a major step for the transplant program," says Program Director, pediatric hematologist/oncologist Michael Joyce, M.D., Ph.D., from Nemours Children's Clinic. "The physicians and Hematology/Oncology staff at Mayo, Nemours and Wolfson all worked extremely hard to achieve this accreditation in a short period of time."

The program was created just over two years ago to allow for greater collaboration in physician and staff expertise, research and clinical protocols. Many of the patient referrals to the blood and marrow transplant program come from physicians at Nemours Children's Clinics in Jacksonville, Orlando and Pensacola as well as from across the region. During the past two years the combined program has transplanted over 100 patients with a variety of illnesses including childhood leukemia, Ewings Sarcoma, neuroblastoma, multiple myeloma, lymphoma and amyloidosis. Stem cell sources include the patient, HLA matched family members or unrelated donors of marrow or umbilical cord blood stem cells.

The program shares a single cryopreservation laboratory (where stem cells are frozen and processed) located at Mayo's St. Luke's Hospital. St. Luke's maintains the program's adult blood and marrow transplant unit, and Wolfson Children's Hospital maintains its pediatric blood and marrow transplant unit. The program shares information systems, network and other clinical and administrative staff. Mayo Clinic hematologist Lawrence Solberg, M.D., Ph.D., was the merged program's first director, serving in that capacity through the certification process. "When the programs merged two years ago, one of our goals was full accreditation by FACT," Solberg says. "More and more, insurance companies are only paying for transplants through programs accredited by FACT. So this is welcome news for patients who might otherwise have to leave home or travel a greater distance for a transplant."

The facilities inspected were the clinical, bone marrow and peripheral blood progenitor cell and cell processing laboratory facilities

"The success of the program, both academically and clinically, is attributable to a group of outstanding physicians and staff who wanted to do what was in the best interests of their patients and the community at-large," says Michael Haight, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Wolfson Children's Hospital.