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Transcripts
DR. ROCK:
This is what they look like.
If you put the plasmas or the cryosupernatant
onto a gel and you run them down through an
electrical field to separate them, and then you
probe them or identify them with an antibody to
von Willebrand factor, you see these kinds of
patterns.
This is a normal plasma control
in which you see repeating bands of von
Willebrand factor up to and around this range.
This is a platelet control where you see the
same kind of bands, but you will notice that
there are more down here in this area which is
the area where the larger molecular weight forms
of von Willebrand factor are present.
If you look at the plasma, you
will see that this is pretty much like our
control, which it should be, but if you look at
cryoprecipitate, you will see that it's darker
and appears to have more of the bigger forms.
What cryoprecipitate is, is a
precipitate which is formed when plasma is frozen
at very low temperatures and then slowly thawed.
It is highly enriched in three percent of all
the plasma proteins and particularly contains
factor eight and von Willebrand factor. It was
the 1960 discovery of cryoprecipitate by Judith
Prewell (phonetic) which made possible the
treatment of hemophiliacs by any form of
concentrate rather than using whole plasma. It
was the first time hemophiliacs had a therapeutic
option.
But now we find that the other
side of that product, the cryodeflated plasma
appears to be of benefit in our patients because
as you can see from the supernatant plasma,
first of all, there's obviously much less von
Willebrand factor present than there is in any
of the presentations plus, certainly, it doesn't
have the larger forms of von Willebrand factor.
