The new specialty programs will have significant resources and opportunities for growth, he said. Establishing them at the duPont hospital means many area children with such complicated illnesses do not need to travel far from home for care, he said. For example, children in need of bone marrow transplants previously needed to travel to hospitals in Philadelphia, Baltimore or other states for the treatment. The only other facility doing bone marrow transplants in Delaware is Christiana Care, and most cases there involve adults. The treatment can take two to three months to complete.
Bone marrow is where stem cells live.
Stem cells produce red and white blood cells and platelets. Marrow transplantation may be necessary as a treatment for cancers such as leukemia or for patients with other cancers who receive chemotherapy or radiation therapy. Those treatments may destroy normal blood-producing cells in the bone marrow along with cancerous cells. Patients can find bone marrow matches from within their families or from one of the 4 million donors who contribute to the National Marrow Donor Program, said Helen Ng, spokeswoman with the Minnesota-based program. Finding a match is more complicated than matching blood types, but Trigg said he has found ways to use bone marrow on some patients without a perfect match.