Scientific & Medical Advisory Panel

Dr. Afriye Amerson is an OB/Gyn who believes in "saving one life at a time through cord blood banking".  Dr. Amerson is  an assistant attending physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Hackensack University Medical Center, and since Jan. 2010 has her own private practice at Amerson Women Health Care in River Edge, New Jersey.  Dr. Amerson is also actively involved in media appearances and has spoken about cord blood banking in a number of venues.  She has appeared on local radio stations WRNJ, WOND, WTBQ, as well as the TV shows The Morning Show and The Montel Williams Show.  Dr. Amerson is writing a book of meditations on pregnancy.  She has initiated a cord blood education program, "La Doctora's Angels", which relies on nurses to spread information about public cord blood donation.

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Dr. Cherie Daly is a qualified medical practitioner from South Africa who has clinical experience in numerous fields, with a special interest in Psychiatry. She has over 6 years international experience in the stem cell industry.  Dr. Daly served as Executive Manager for Cryo-Save Arabia, where she was responsible for establishing and managing their new cord blood laboratory in Dubai.  During her time in the Gulf Region, Dr. Daly lobbied at the governmental level and with key regional institutes to educate and introduce cord blood banking to expectant parents in a region where there was no such service.  Since 2009, Dr. Daly is the Group Medical Affairs Manager for CordLife in Singapore, a company that is a leader in private cord blood banking in Asia, with laboratories in Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Philippines, India, and an association with the two largest public/private cord blood banks in China.  She is currently focussed on establishing clinical trials for non-hematological indications in Asia. She has spoken at numerous regional and international medical conferences, appeared on radio and television, and speaks to prospective parents on the benefits of cord blood banking.  Her passion is to provide accurate education for both healthcare professionals and parents, and to ensure that all expectant parents have the necessary tools to enable an educated choice when it comes to their options regarding their child’s cord blood.

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Dr. Kurtzberg is the Chief of Pediatric Blood and Marrow Transplantation at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina.  Dr. Kurtzberg was the first physician in the United States to begin transplanting cord blood, in 1993.  Under her leadership, Duke university has performed over a thousand cord blood transplants and has pioneered new clinical applications for cord blood transplants.  They showed that allogeneic cord blood transplants can correct metabolic disorders, such as storage diseases, in young children.  They are currently conducting a trial on the use of autologous cord blood transfusions to treat cerebral palsy and brain injury in young children.  Dr. Kurtzberg is also the Director of Cell and Tissue Therapies at the Duke Translational Medicine Institute (DTMI).  In addition to her clinical responsibilities, Dr. Kurtzberg serves the cord blood community in a number of leadership and committee positions.  Dr. Kurtzberg is the Director of the Carolinas Cord Blood Bank, a public bank at Duke University which participates in the NMDP network of cord blood banks.  She is a co-chair of the NMDP Cord Blood Committee, is on the Board of Directors of the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy (FACT), and is on the HRSA Advisory Council on Blood Stem Cell Transplantation.  Dr. Kurtzberg is also the Medical Director of CORD:USE, a for-profit company that offers both public and private/family cord blood banking.  On top of all these responsibilities, Dr. Kurtzberg is never too busy to respond to inquiries from parents or patients.

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Darla Lindenmayer is a certified doula, childbirth educator, and lactation consultant.  She is also the mother of Matthew, Spencer, and Cierra.  Matthew was diagnosed at age 5 with Fanconi Anemia, a disease which can be treated with a stem cell transplant from a donor (allogeneic transplant).  Matthew underwent a perfectly matched bone marrow transplant at age 7, but continued to suffer numerous complications due to cytogenetic abnormalities in his organs.  During this ordeal he went on and off hospice care three times.  Finally, Matthew passed away in April 2004 at age 13.  Nearly three years later, Spencer was diagnosed at age 10 with Type 1 Diabetes.  In March 2007, Spencer became the oldest child to participate in a clinical trial for Type 1 Diabetes using infusions of his own cord blood (autologous stem cell therapy).  As a result of the cord blood treatment, Spencer's dependence on insulin injections dropped six-fold, and a year after the treatment he was still making his own insulin.  Ms. Lindenmayer is available as a public speaker to various groups about the importance of becoming a stem cell donor and of saving cord blood.  "There are times I feel (Matthew's) passing has given me a voice", she said. 

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Sharon Low is the co-founder and Managing Director of StemLife, the first and largest family cord blood bank in Malaysia and the leading family cord blood bank throughout Asia for releasing transplants.  Ms. Low is a multi-lingual biochemist who communicates well with both technical and lay audiences.  She has an international following through her popular "StemLife Blog" on stem cells at www.stemlife1.blogspot.com.  Under her leadership, StemLife has established cord blood collection services at over 150 hospitals nationwide, has expanded through a partnership in Thailand, and has been listed on the MESDAQ board of the Malaysian stock exchange.  Ms. Low helped to found the Asia Pacific Cord Blood Bank Consortium and currently serves as its Chair.  StemLife also provides storage of autologous adult stem cells for a network of regenerative medicine clinics which are developing treatments for stroke, heart disease, joint repair, and diabetic ulcers.  StemLife has research partnerships to explore the differentiation of cord blood stem cells into various tissue types and their growth on scaffolds.  Ms. Low is also one of the Distinguished Fellows of the Malaysian Biotechnology Information Centre (MABIC).

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Dr. Martini is the co-founder and Scientific Director of Smart Bank s.r.l., a family cord blood bank based in Rome, Italy, which uses laboratory storage facilities at BioVault in the UK. She has worked as a post-PhD researcher at La Sapienza University Microbiology laboratory, and at the Virology laboratory of the Italian National Insititute of Health, ‘Instituto Superiore di Sanita’.  Dr Martini has also taken part in several European Union and World Health Organisation (WHO) international research projects in collaboration with the Institut Pasteur in Paris, exploiting her skills in Cellular Biology, Molecular Biology, Neurobiology, Microbiology, and Immunology fields. She has more than fifteen years experience as a researcher, and has written several scientific publications as well as patent documents. As part of her work with Smart Bank, Dr Martini has appeared frequently on national television and radio to explain the benefits of cord blood storage. She also runs monthly courses for prospective parents on the potential benefits of storage, including the latest research developments, as well as courses for gynaecologists and mid-wives. She is currently collaborating with the Gaslini Institute on a project concerning perinatal solid cancer in children.  She has recently launched a web site, www.smartbank.tv, which presents information and videos about stem cells and their uses. Smart Bank advocates storage of cord blood both for the family and for the public via donation.  Their lab, BioVault, is the only bank in the UK which offers both kinds of storage. She has three children herself, and was able to save cord blood for the youngest.

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Dr. Moskowitz specializes in pathology and the medical leadership of blood banks.  She holds academic appointments as Lecturer in Pathology at Harvard Medical School and as Assistant Clinical Professor of Pathology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.    Dr. Moskowitz has held several posts directing blood banks throughout the New York area, including at the Bronx Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the New York Blood Center, and the Blood Bank and Hematology Laboratories at the Albany Medical Center.   She also served as Chairman of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at St. Vincent’s Midtown Hospital in New York.  More recently, she has served as the medical director of cord blood banks, both private and public.  Dr. Moskowitz has provided healthcare consultant services in the fields of blood banking, cellular therapeutics, laboratory medicine, pharmaceutical, medical-legal and regulatory affairs, and medical informatics.  Dr. Moskowitz is active in the AABB and serves on the AABB’s Cellular Therapies -Standards Program Unit.  She also serves as a Consultant to the New York State Cord Blood Stem Cell Bank Study Panel.

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Dr. Solomon Ofori-Acquah is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Hematology/Oncology at the Aflac Cancer Center and Blood Disorders Service within the Emory University School of Medicine in Georgia.  Dr. Ofori-Acquah conducts research on the role of molecular genetics in disease susceptibility and progression.  Dr. Ofori-Acquah is currently Principal Investigator on two NIH grants.  One NIH grant focuses on lung endothelial barrier function and its deregulation by sickle erythrocytes in sickle cell disease.  The other NIH grant seeks to determine if loss of ALCAM gene expression contributes to the observed disparities in breast cancer tumorgenesis, which can be more aggressive in African-American women.  Dr. Ofori-Acquah has a special interest in the development of sickle cell disease research and management in the "post-genomic era".  Dr. Ofori-Acquah has served the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America (SCDAA) in several capacities, and is presently both a member of their Medical and Research Advisory Committee, as well as the  editor of their newsletter.  Dr. Ofori-Acquah also serves the medical community as a career mentor for the Minority Medical Student Award Program of the American Society of Hematology, and as an advisor to a number of students and post-doctoral fellows.

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Kim Petrella is a Labor & Delivery Nurse in the Dept. of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware, and is a member of the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric, and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN).  She gave a presentation at the 2007 annual AWHONN convention in Orlando, FL in 2007 on the implementation of a cord blood donation program at Christiana Hospital.  Mrs. Petrella specializes in educating medical professionals about the importance of saving cord blood.  She has advocated for public cord blood donation on behalf of the Brady Kohn Foundation.  Mrs. Petrella has had numerous speaking engagements about the about the power and future of cord blood stem cells.  In addition to medical professionals, she has spoken to medical students, nursing students, and high school students.   Most of all, she focuses her energies on empowering parents to save their baby's cord blood versus throwing it away.  Her efforts were recognized in Oct. 2007 by an award from Delaware Health and Social Services as one of the Governor’s Outstanding Volunteer Award winners in the state of Delaware.

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Dr. Rogers is an Associate Scientist and Assistant Professor at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute of Mt. Sinai Hospital, in Toronto, Canada.  His research is focused on umbilical cord blood (UCB) stem cell biology, UCB stem cell expansion, and the development of UCB cell therapies for hematopoietic diseases, neural diseases, and diabetes.  It is his hope to bring UCB stem cell therapy from bench to bedside as a standard therapy for disease treatment.  In order for that to become a reality, the following hurdles must be overcome: 1) safety issues 2) sufficient cell numbers 3) easily accessible sources 4) efficient mode of delivery to the target organs and 5) demonstrated functional improvement after transplantation. The research in Dr. Rogers' laboratory aims to solve some of these problems.  They have established culture conditions which proliferate and maintain multipotent UCB stem cells.  They are currently examining the stability and predictability of the process, so that it can be used to produce clinically significant numbers of stem cells for therapeutic treatment.  Dr. Rogers is also a Scientific Founder of the oldest family cord blood bank in Canada, Insception Biosciences.  Together with is colleagues from Insception, Dr. Zandstra and Dr. Casper, Dr. Rogers has received approval from the USA FDA for a Phase 1 clinical trial to "assess the safety and preliminary efficacy of amplified hematopoietic stem cells from UCB in patients with hematological malignancies".

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Frank Schott is the product manager of VITA34 International AG, a German company located in Leipzig which was the first family cord blood bank in Europe. The name VITA34 is a combination of "VITA", for "Life", and "34", for the CD34+ chemical stain used to identify stem cells in the laboratory.  Mr. Schott helped design the current layout of this website, and has translated parts of it into a German version at www.stammzellinfo.de.  As a result, Germans rank as the 3rd highest readers of this website, after Americans and Canadians.  In 2008 VITA34 became the first family bank in the Western hemisphere to offer clients the option of donating their child's cord blood if it matches a patient who needs a transplant.  Schott holds a "Diplom-Arabist" degree in oriental studies and he first worked after college as a news editor and radio journalist. In 2001 he joined VITA34 working in public relations. Since 2006 he has been their product manager, and in summer 2007 he completed a "Betriebswirt", or graduate degree in business administration. This followed closely the birth of his first children, a boy and girl set of twins.

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Dr. Weiss is a Professor of Neuroscience and Stem Cell Biology in the Dept. of Anatomy and Physiology at the Kansas State University School of Veterinary Medicine (KSUCVM).  Dr. Weiss, together with his colleagues Drs. Deryl Troyer, Duane Davis, and Kathy Mitchell, discovered that the matrix of the umbilical cord, also known as Wharton's Jelly, holds mesenchymal stromal cells which may differentiate along the lineages of bone, fat, cartilage and neurons.  Kansas State University has a patent on methods to harvest, grow, and store umbilical cord matrix stem cells and the use of matrix cells for therapy, tissue engineering, and biotechnology.  Dr. Weiss is one of four founders of the The Midwest Institute for Comparative Stem Cell Biology, and he is Associate Director of the  Terry C. Johnson Center for Basic Cancer Research at KSU.  Currently, Dr. Weiss's laboratory is characterizing the role of human and animal umbilical cord matrix stem cells to reverse the behavioral deficits found in a rat model of Parkinson's disease.  Dr. Weiss is also a consultant for the Toucan Capital Corporation.

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