From left: Bone Marrow Donor Institute chief executive Eric Wright, James English, Darren English, of Pakenham, Inner Wheel Australia president Carolyn Brown, medical researcher Dr Ngaire Elwood, and Inner Wheel Australia past president Anne McGill, of Berwick.PAKENHAM lad, James English, has featured in this year’s presentation of a $65,000 research grant to Dr Ngaire Elwood of the Children’s Cancer Centre.
James, who suffered from Aplastic anaemia, thanked Inner Wheel Australia (IWA) members who provided grant money for cord blood research that saved his life.
He told his story to IWA representatives from all over Victoria who met at the Bone Marrow Research Institute in North Melbourne on Wednesday, 19 April.
James was living proof of the wonderful work being done in the fight against leukaemia, made possible by IWA fundraising for a special program to support cord blood research.
Cord blood is taken from umbilical cords immediately after births and has become a vital component in cancer treatment research, particularly leukaemia in children.
Who knows what other treatments Dr Elwood and her team will discover on their way to finding a cure for this dreadful disease.
We believe the Inner Wheel money combined with Dr Elwood’s research team has already found an important factor in this treatment.
Dr Elwood said during presentation of the grant that blood from each birth could be different.
She said cells from some cords grew well, but others not so well.
She needs to find a way to recognise which type of cord blood units grow well once they are transplanted to a patient.
During the meeting I came to recognise the importance of the work these women have been doing quietly behind the scenes.
Their excitement of what Dr Elwood has already achieved was ‘infectious’ and hopefully my readers will drop in an extra dollar or two next time they see a cord blood fundraiser in their community.
These are women with no special claims to fame except that they save the lives of sick children.
What a wonderful thing for the families who can say cord blood research meant their children survived a terrible illness.
Melbourne researchers have found an important link in the types of cord bloods collected because deoxyribo nucleic acid (DNA), the main constituent of living chromosomes in all living things is different in a range of the bloods.
Chromosomes are microscopic genecarrying bodies that determine our inbuilt characteristics.
They found that one blood with long DNAs was successful in saving lives in a group of patients by as much as 100 per cent as opposed to 33 per cent of patients given blood with short DNAs.
A largescale clinical study is to be started with Inner Wheel money to prove that this needs to be taken into consideration so that patients receive the most effective treatment.
Dr Elwood said this work was made possible only because of support from Inner Wheel.
