FARGO (KFGO) – A ribbon cutting was held Tues. for the Sanford Roger Maris Cancer Center’s new Bone Marrow Transplant Program which began conducting the transplants last fall. Patients needing bone marrow transplants in Fargo and around the region once had to travel 3-10 hours to the University of Minnesota or Mayo Clinic to receive the necessary stem cell treatments, but with the new program that’s no longer the case.
“Roger Maris Cancer Center for years has been a fairly comprehensive center, providing all the medical oncology, surgical oncology, and radiation oncology that the region needs,” said Dr. Seth Maliske, a hematologist and bone marrow transplant specialist with the program. “The stem cell transplant program is the final cap on that whole comprehensive team.”
Maliske says the Roger Maris facility is now able to provide the equivalent of care to any cancer center in the Midwest.
The first bone marrow transplant at the Maris Center was completed in October of 2021. Since the program began, nine patients have successfully completed transplants.
Program manager Abby Haugen says, in addition to a lot of education and training to get staff ready to care for stem cell transplant patients, Sanford has developed new space with HEPA filter rooms for patient safety, developed a state-of-the-art stem cell processing lab, and purchased new machines to collect patient stem cells.
Haugen says helping to eliminate the major disruptions that traveling long distances for care causes in patients’ lives and the lives of their caregivers was a primary goal.
“This is certainly a program for all of Sanford, not just Fargo, so we really thought about our whole region as we built this program and tried to decrease the amount of travel for patients,” she said.
Haugen said called being able to offer the transplants here in Fargo a “game changer” for patients from across the region.
