Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg and the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg is an internationally renowned expert in umbilical cord blood transplantation. She is a professor in the Department of Pediatrics and Pathology at Duke University, Director of the Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant (PBMT) program at Duke University Medical Center and Director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank. She also serves as co-director of the Stem Cell Laboratory at Duke and co-chair of the National Marrow Donor Program Cord Blood Committee. The PBMT is the largest dedicated pediatric transplant program in the United States.
Dr. Kurtzberg pioneered and continues to advance the use of banked umbilical cord blood as a source of stem cells for marrow transplantation. Under her leadership, Duke has established an internationally known children’s transplant program that currently treats children with cancer, blood disorders, immune deficiencies, metabolic disorders and enzyme deficiencies. Since its creation in 1990, the PBMT has performed nearly 1,400 transplants, with over half of all children treated surviving long term and considered cured of their underlying disease.
The PBMT at Duke is known for its leadership in both established techniques and research initiatives. Using a variety of approaches, Dr. Kurtzberg and her colleagues have led the field in the use of both matched and mismatched umbilical cord blood stem cells to treat patients with multiple conditions, many of whom would not otherwise be eligible for transplantation. She pioneered the use of unrelated umbilical cord blood transplants for children with resistant cancers and rare metabolic diseases, and she personally performed the nation’s first unrelated cord blood transplant.
For children who do not have a matched donor, these advances extend life-saving therapies to significantly larger numbers of patients. The cord blood program also allows the PBMT to quickly identify unrelated donors, a critical concern for children diagnosed with inborn errors of metabolism, bone marrow failure, immunodeficiency syndromes, inherited metabolic diseases, enzyme deficiencies and advanced leukemias.
By infusing children with stem cells taken from the discarded umbilical cords of unrelated newborn babies, Dr. Kurtzberg has shown that she can treat and cure many childhood diseases. The procedure replaces the child’s defective immune and blood-forming systems with disease-free cells, or it provides enzymes that are missing in children with metabolic disorders.
Her research studies are the first to demonstrate that cord blood transplants can save the lives of children with Hurler’s syndrome and Krabbe disease, two of the fatal metabolic diseases in which children are missing an enzyme critical to normal growth and development. The missing enzyme allows progressive damage to the brain, heart, bones, cartilage, liver and corneas to occur, typically resulting in death by age six. Her studies also show that stem cells can repair much of the progressive brain and organ damage that occurs in children with these diseases.
In 2005, Dr. Kurtzberg served as an expert to Congress during the drafting of a bill that funds the growth and development of national cord blood banks. The banks store units of cord blood where physicians from around the nation can search and identify suitable units for their patients. Until the bill passed in December of 2005, there was little federal funding to defray the considerable costs of collecting, processing and storing cord blood units.
Link to Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg CV
Link to Dr. Suhag Parikh CV
Link to Dr. Kadiyala Ravindra CV
Links to Videos
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Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg |
Dr. Suhag Parikh |
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Professor of Pediatrics and Pathology, Duke University |
Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Duke University |
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Director, Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program |
Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplant Program Hematologist/Oncologist |
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Director, Carolinas Cord Blood Bank |
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Dr. Kadiyala Ravindra |
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Assistant Professor of Surgery, |
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Division of Transplantation, Duke University |
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