Hospital will be able to provide life-saving
bone marrow transplants and
CAR T-cell therapy cancer
treatments to Central Valley Kids
MADERA,
Calif., May 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Valley
Children's Healthcare this week announced a historic donation of
$15 million that will significantly
enhance the hospital's ability to provide the most advanced bone
marrow transplant and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell
therapy treatments to kids with cancer in the Central Valley.
"This gift will bring transformational
cancer therapies to children whose families look to us to provide
the best care."
The new program will eliminate the need to refer patients who
need these advanced treatments to the few facilities in
Los Angeles or the Bay Area that
can provide them.
"This gift will bring transformational cancer therapies directly
to the children whose families look to us to provide them with the
best care in the country," said Todd Suntrapak, president and CEO
of Valley Children's Healthcare. "Children who need these advanced
therapies will no longer have to travel long distances and spend
extended days away from home to get treatment and will be able to
receive life-saving therapies in a familiar setting, with their
families close by."
CAR T-cell therapy is an advanced genetically engineered therapy
that uses the body's natural immune system to fight cancer and
infections. The therapy involves genetically modifying a patient's
own disease-fighting T-cells with additional receptors or proteins
that allow the T-cells to "recognize" infected or cancerous cells
and destroy them. In a key CAR T-cell study in 2021, approximately
60% of children who underwent CAR T-cell therapy were cancer-free
after five years.
Autologous bone marrow transplants are used to treat certain
forms of cancer in children by replacing diseased bone marrow cells
with other, healthy marrow cells from their own body. The approach
has been used with success for more than 50 years, marked by
continual advances in the technique.
"These therapies are some of the most powerful weapons we have
in our cancer-fighting arsenal, but they also require a combination
of medical expertise and specialized equipment to deliver
effectively," said Dr. Vinod Balasa,
medical director of Valley Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders
Center. "With this amazing donation, Valley Children's joins the
ranks of the top children's hospitals in the nation that can offer
these therapies, as well as be among the first to have access to
future advances. This is a life-saving advancement for our
patients."
The anonymous donation is one of the largest single donations in
the more than 70-year history of Valley Children's Healthcare. The
gift will support not only the establishment and accreditation of
the program but also operational funding for its first 10 years. It
will take three to four years to establish the program and achieve
accreditation.
"This is exactly the kind of program we work hard to bring to
the Central Valley in keeping with our mission and our unwavering
commitment to expand access to care to the children of our region,"
Suntrapak added. "Earning this historic gift is a testament to the
amazing medical, nursing and support staff at Valley Children's and
reflects our reputation as a leader in children's healthcare and
the importance of our pediatric Cancer and Blood Disorders Center
to the region."
Bone marrow transplant as a treatment option for childhood
cancer has been used for decades, said Dr. Balasa. In 2017,
chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-Cell treatment was approved for
advanced B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. To date, more than
2,000 children have received CAR T-cell therapy and 60% of them are
alive and cancer free after 5 years. Without CAR T-cell therapy, it
is likely that all of them would have died.
Valley Children's Cancer and Blood Disorders Center is
consistently in the top 5-8% percent worldwide in patient
enrollment to the Children's Oncology Group (COG), the world's
largest organization devoted to childhood cancer research. As a
member of COG, Valley Children's has access to more than 90
protocols to treat our patients with the most common to some of the
rarest pediatric cancers.
However, until the donation, the hospital has had to send
patients to Los Angeles or the Bay
Area for cell therapies, including bone marrow transplants and CAR
T-cell treatments.
"Because of this important donation, we will be able to
establish a life-saving cellular and gene therapy program at Valley
Children's. This is truly a momentous day for our hospital and the
Central Valley community," Dr. Balasa added.
About Valley Children's Healthcare
Valley
Children's Healthcare provides Central
California's only high-quality, comprehensive care
exclusively for children, from before birth to young adulthood. Our
network offers highly specialized medical and surgical
services to care for children with conditions ranging from common
to the highly complex at its 358-bed stand-alone children's
hospital that includes 28 NICU beds at partner hospitals. In
addition, the Valley Children's Healthcare network includes
specialty care centers, pediatric primary care practices and
women's health services.
Our family-centered, pediatric services extend from a leading
pediatric cancer and blood diseases center on the West Coast, and a
pediatric heart center known for its expertise and pioneering
treatments, to an 88-bed Regional Level IV neonatal intensive care
unit (NICU), the highest-level referral center between Los Angeles and the Bay Area.
Valley Children's was the first children's hospital west of
the Rockies to receive Magnet Nursing designation, the highest
nursing benchmark in the world. In 2023, U.S. News and World Report
again named Valley Children's one of the best children's hospitals
in the country in seven pediatric specialties. With more than 670
physicians and 3,500 staff, Valley Children's delivers
high-quality, comprehensive care to more than 1.3 million children
from Kern County to the state
capital and from the Central Coast to the Sierra. For more
information, please
visit www.valleychildrens.org
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SOURCE Valley Children's Healthcare