Ted Collins is a seasoned cancer researcher with plenty of money and connections to the best doctors anywhere, but none of it could save his 26-year-old daughter Natasha from leukemia.

Natasha, a medical student at Yale University when she died in August, was of mixed race, and that put her on the most unlevel of playing fields in the search for a bone marrow match.

“It’s impossible for mixed race and most minorities to get a perfect match,” said Collins, a clinical immunologist. “It’s the chance of finding a small needle in a big haystack.”

Two of the main reasons matches are so difficult are because minority populations are heterogeneous, meaning there’s a lot of ethnic mixing, and because there are fewer minorities and mixed-race people overall.

To compound the problem, cultural factors and lack of awareness has meant fewer minorities being willing to be tested as possible matches, he said.

Collins, who is African-American and married to an Irish-American woman who is Natasha’s mother, couldn’t save his only daughter, but he’s hoping to save others through an enterprise called “Natasha’s Place,” a cord blood blank, as in umbilical cord blood rich in stem cells. Although Natasha’s Place serves people of every ethnicity, its research and advocacy components focus on mixed heritage and minority-related issues. Ted Collins said only 7 percent of all African Americans have donors, which means, “We lose 93 percent.”

Cord blood comes from umbilical cords that are disposed of after the birth of a child. The advantage of stem cell-rich cord blood in healing those with leukemia, sickle cell anemia, lupus, heart disease, liver disease, immune disorders, diabetes and many and other life-threatening illness is that the match doesn’t have to be as exact as with bone marrow, and won’t cause life-threatening complications. Natasha didn’t die from leukemia, but rather a graft vs. host rejection, because the bone marrow match was far from perfect, Collins said.

Cord blood is the blood that remains in the umbilical cord after the baby is born and the umbilical cord is cut, Collins said. Once considered medical waste and thrown away, scientists now know that cord blood is rich in stem cells and those cells are important because they make many different types of cells in the body, including blood cells that carry oxygen, fight disease and help stop bleeding, Collins said.

State lawmakers recognize the importance of the cord blood. A bill passed recently by Connecticut legislators requires doctors to give cord blood information regarding banking and donating to every pregnant woman.

To read the rest of this story, please click here.