A new, well-funded
medical facility on
old farmland begins a
fresh harvest: life-saving stem cells from umbilical cord blood.

Sherry Lund loves the sound of vaporized liquid nitrogen. It’s the sound she hears every Friday morning just outside her office at the new Celebration Stem Cell Centre in Gilbert, the Valley’s first umbilical cord blood bank.

That’s when the cryogenic freezers in the clean room right across the hall are pumped with their weekly blast of the minus 300-degree Fahrenheit liquid, refilling the base of each container to its proper level and emitting a white cloud of steam from a vent in each lid.

For Lund, who manages the estimable family trust of her husband, developer Bill Lund (a series of original Disney cartoon cells in the hallway gives a subtle nod to Bill’s inheritance, by a previous marriage to Walt Disney’s daughter), it’s the sound of a dream about to take off.

“Running a family foundation has been the most exciting thing in my life,” says Sherry Lund, who has channeled the trust funds into advanced medical services for the East Valley, such as the pediatric wing at Mercy Gilbert Medical Center. “But after I saw the amazing work they were doing with cord blood stem cells at Mercy Gilbert, I really saw that becoming the new standard of care. So many things, from heart disease to cancers to cerebral palsy and Parkinson’s, are being treated with cord blood saved from birth [at other facilities worldwide]. It’s something hospitals usually throw away, but it’s a life-saving force.”

For an initial payment of $1,975 and a $125 annual fee, Celebration will store the umbilical cord blood of a mother’s newborn for use in treating medical needs that might arise in the child’s lifetime. Mothers also will be encouraged by Valley hospitals working in partnership with Lund’s center to donate the cord blood for free, which the center will use to build a bank for hospitals needing viable stem cells for transplants and various treatments.

The 4,700-square-foot center, located in a $20 million medical plaza developed by Bill Lund near Mercy Gilbert at Val Vista Drive and the Santan Freeway, will not be the state’s first facility for storing umbilical cord blood. Tucson is already home to what’s considered the world’s largest, operated by the San Bruno, California-based Cord Blood Registry. Last January, the center took in its 300,000th sample.

But Lund’s cord bank aims to be the most accessible and scientifically advanced in the country. With its floor-to-ceiling glass walls, sleek countertops and shiny, percolating dewars, the clean room at Celebration’s center looks like a cross between a chic microbrewery and an Apple Store – which is partly the point.

“I’ve built this state-of-the-art facility so that’s there’s nothing hidden,” Lund says. She admits stem cell therapy gets a bad rap from the embryonic variety, which controversially harvests aborted fetuses – something cord blood banks do not. Celebration will also be able to process the blood for viable stem cells before storage, a step most blood banks leave to the hospitals to perform after a sample has been retrieved for medical use – which is sometimes too late, according to Mercy Gilbert cardiologist Dr. Nabil Dib, Celebration’s medical director.

“A good-sized heart attack, for example, will damage between 500 million to 800 million cells,” Dib says. “To repair that, you’re going to need more viable stem cells than some cord blood samples can provide. But this facility will be able to process and expand the stem cells to produce enough to sufficiently treat a disease. Very few facilities like that exist in this country.”