November 18, 2004
Tissue Center Partner
Two nonprofit leaders in tissue banking, Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation (MTF) and Northwest Tissue Center, announced a new agreement this month to make MTF’s proprietary tissue grafts more accessible to patients in hospitals served by the Tissue Center.
Through the agreement, MTF processes bone provided by the Tissue Center into highly machined, precisely tooled bone grafts and demineralized bone pastes, putties and gels. MTF’s partner, Synthes, promotes these tissues in local health-care facilities and hospitals. The Tissue Center will distribute both of these categories of innovative allografts that improve patient care.
The partnership allows both nonprofits to maintain their longstanding commitment to keeping recovered tissue in their original regions – a very important goal for community based organizations such as MTF and the Tissue Center. According to the Northwest Tissue Center, 85 percent of the tissue it provides stays in its region, which consists of Washington, Montana and northern Idaho.
“As part of our ongoing commitment to meeting the region’s needs for transplanted tissue, we’ve entered into a partnership with a national tissue processor we trust,” said Margery Moogk, director of Northwest Tissue Center. “In formulating this relationship with our new partner, some issues were non-negotiable for us. We are committed to providing allografts from bone we recover in our community, so we can be confident that donor suitability, recovery and processing, serological screening, and microbiological testing comply with our rigorous policies and procedures. We sought a relationship with a partner who respects that objective. We believe that MTF adheres to the same strict policies and procedures in community tissue banking.”
