With lives at stake, a biomedical company turns to UPS for temperature-sensitive transportation

With just 72 hours to transport viable biomaterial, reliability can be a matter of life or death, says StemCyte laboratory operations director Matt McCarter.

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For seriously ill patients, a new chance at life may come from stem cell transplants. Many of those patients count on StemCyte Inc., an international stem cell transplantation and therapeutic products company – and, increasingly, StemCyte counts on UPS.

When patients receive chemotherapy or radiation treatment to destroy the abnormal cells that are making them sick, their normal cells are damaged, too. Stem cell transplants from a healthy donor provide new "building block" cells that can develop into specialized cells, such as blood, muscle and nerve. Stem cell therapy is used in the treatment of more than 70 diseases, including leukemia, immune deficiency diseases and genetic disorders.

With its worldwide network, StemCyte collects stem cells from donated umbilical cord blood and stores the units either for private use by the donor's family or for use by others, depending on the family's wishes.

Careful control and coordination
Transporting delicate cord blood units, or CBUs, requires carefully controlled conditions and finely tuned coordination – the CBUs must be stored below 25 degrees Celsius and arrive at their destination within 48 hours of collection. Before the actual donation, blood samples are shipped to StemCyte and collection kits are then shipped out. The company relies on a network of hospitals, physicians and its own field-based employees to collect and package the materials.

"There are so many levels to StemCyte's business, every time we visit we find there's more and more," says Christopher Naf, the UPS account executive who helped StemCyte configure a rock-solid supply chain.

Eliminating reliability concerns
Reliability is the key attribute that StemCyte had been seeking in a carrier when it turned to UPS.

"With our previous vendor, we had reliability issues," says Donald "Matt" McCarter, StemCyte's laboratory operations director. "Some of these collections may be the only match for a person. What we really wanted was reliable delivery, and that is what we got with UPS."

Now, StemCyte staffers can follow the progress of a shipment using a UPS tracking tool called Quantum View^®. If they were to spot a problem, they could alert UPS – but they’ve discovered that UPS often alerts them first.

"Our local UPS agents proactively call us and start to work on a solution before we ever know there's a problem," McCarter says. "For instance, when there's been a mechanical issue with a plane and they've had to reroute our shipment, they tell us, 'Hey, look, we've been able to get it on this other flight.' "

McCarter says he's extremely satisfied with the service StemCyte has received from UPS. "We needed both reliable deliveries and prompt responses to help us resolve issues before they became a problem," he says. With UPS, "We're making sure that life-saving products arrive when they’re supposed to."

UPS offers a range of shipping solutions especially for the healthcare industry. Watch a demo of our capabilities at ups.com/healthcare.