Proceeds from the 2025 Red & White Ball will help build capacity in an area of historic interest for The Blood & Tissue Center Foundation – supporting new cures for cancer and other serious conditions – the board of directors decided at their meeting Monday.
In 2016, proceeds from the Red & White Ball paid for Spectra Optia devices, which continue to collect stem cell donations for patients battling leukemia, lymphoma and related conditions. Those devices have taken on new uses in the development of advanced therapies, which use the body’s own cells to fight illnesses from cancer to Parkinson’s disease.
This year, the ball will support the development of these transformative new therapies and build capacity to help make them available to patients in San Antonio and South Texas.
A major roadblock to the collection of cells and their use for advanced therapies is geographical, explained Adrienne Mendoza, Chief Operating Officer of BBG Advanced Therapies, which was created to integrate cell and gene therapy services previously spread across South Texas Blood & Tissue and other BioBridge Global operating units.
There are only 20 accredited locations that collect cells for these kinds of treatments in the entire state, Mendoza said. While there are only three accredited centers in San Antonio, including the BBG Advanced Therapies Apheresis Center in the BioBridge Global headquarters building, there are none across most of south and west Texas, limiting access to patients across much of the state.
As a result, one of the biggest initial projects for the newest subsidiary of BioBridge Global is the launch of a mobile cell collection bus – similar to the bloodmobiles currently in use by South Texas Blood & Tissue, but with a different design and purpose.
The vehicle will have the equipment and capacity to collect cells from either donors or patients, two at a time, to be used in specialized therapies to fight cancer and other conditions. The bus also would include a mobile laboratory for on-site testing during the cell donations, which typically take 4-5 hours.
The decision to fund additional equipment and capacity to collect cells needed both for research and the delivery of new advanced therapies continues the longstanding work of The Foundation to support the development of new medical advances.
The Foundation was launched almost 25 years ago to support therapies using stem cells collected from umbilical cords, through the establishment of the Texas Cord Blood Bank, which now operates within BBG Advanced Therapies.
Mendoza noted that the development of advanced therapies is similar to the effort undertaken more than five years ago, when South Texas Blood & Tissue joined with multiple emergency medical care providers and agencies to launch the low-titer O whole blood program. That program provides whole blood for transfusion before seriously injured patients ever reach a hospital.
“We’ll need to bring together a wide cross-section of organizations for the process to be successful,” she said. “Researchers, hospitals, oncologists, the companies that provide these therapies and more.”
The Red & White Ball cause packet and fact sheet with more information on this project – including the diseases it will help fight and the patients who will benefit – will be available soon.
