Cord blood transplant offers hope for Abigail

Abigail Curry, who has leukaemia, is to undergo pioneering treatment this month using blood taken from the frozen umbilical cord of a baby.
The breakthrough has come after her adoptive parents made a desperate appeal for bone marrow donors.

With sessions continuing today at the Stadium of Light, a lack of Afro-Caribbean donors means time is running out.
But dad Malcolm, 55, today revealed that doctors at Newcastle RVI have found a 70 per cent tissue match between Abigail and the blood from a baby's umbilical cord, stored in Spain and Italy.
Malcolm, of Whitburn, said: "In the absence of a bone marrow donor they are happy to proceed with a cord blood transplant. We are just pleased and thankful that they have something they can use and could make a difference for Abigail. The 70 per cent match is high enough and we are happy something can come of it."
The procedure can stimulate bone marrow production, and donors and recipients do not, unlike bone marrow, have to be a precise match.
Sunderland AFC – backed by chairman Niall Quinn – joined forces with The Anthony Nolan Trust, which runs the bone marrow register, to run two recruitment clinics.
Malcolm continued: "If anything comes from this session then they could still flag it up. I don't have high hopes that this will produce anything ,for us, but it could for other people."
Abigail was adopted by Malcolm, a joiner at Sunderland Housing Group, and wife Joanne, 38, when she was just a few weeks old. She was two when she was diagnosed with leukaemia.
New donor Nathan Brown knows Abigail through Hope Church in Hendon.
The 24-year-old, who works at Sunderland-based God TV, said: "In the simplest way this is the opportunity to save someone's life and I thought it was a fantastic way to help for a little bit of time and blood."