Cape Girardeau company, hospitals partner for placenta program

Paul Pfeiffer

One Cape Girardeau business is helping to birth new medical solutions by acquiring donated placental tissue, and their efforts were highlighted in a recent magazine article distributed nationwide.

Paul Pfeiffer, president and chief executive officer of Cardinal Biologicals Inc., acquired the Tyler, Texas-based human biologicals company in 2019 and relocated it to Cape Girardeau, where it already maintained a presence.

The company had previously focused on acquiring blood, plasma, organs and tissues, but after Pfeiffer took it over it became more involved in birth tissue procurement, specifically placentas and amniotic membranes.

To date, Cardinal Biologicals has worked with regional hospitals Mercy Southeast, Saint Francis Healthcare System and Missouri Delta Medical Center to acquire donated birth tissue. The first of these collaborations was with Mercy Southeast back in 2008, when it was known as SoutheastHEALTH.

“The demand for birth tissue … more specifically, amnion grafts, has increased exponentially over the past 10 years because the applications are so widespread. Getting Mercy as a donor hospital was of great importance to us,” Pfeiffer said.

Maggie Marcrander

When Mercy acquired SoutheastHEALTH, Mercy’s clinical vice president for women’s services Maggie Marcrander learned about the existing partnership and thought Pfeiffer’s company would be a good fit to continue with the program. She facilitated a partnership between Cardinal Biologicals and Mercy’s St. Louis hospital starting in April.

She said she was interested in finding new uses for organs that would in most cases simply be incinerated.

“Many people are surprised that there is an opportunity to donate, and when they learn more about it, they’re excited, too,” Marcrander said.

Marcrander was one of three regional health care experts interviewed for the July issue of Catholic Health World magazine about how placenta donations can be used for research into creating ways of helping additional patients.

“There’s some negative press (about placenta donations) on TikTok, so perhaps they were looking into seeing what it’s all about,” she said.

Marcrander said she had seen social media influencers’ distrust toward the health care industry and larger organizations in general because they believe them to be making money off of situations, in this case through the sale of placental tissue.

The National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 outlawed the sale of organs nationwide, but the Food and Drug Administration does allow a reasonable fee for distribution to researchers, Pfeiffer said. So the hospitals allow them to transport and process donated tissues that are then given to researchers. Pfeiffer said Cardinal has supported the hospitals’ foundations, donating some $293,000 to Mercy Health Foundation Southeast and $42,000 to Saint Francis Foundation.

The birth tissue can be used to make skin grafts to heal wounds caused by burns or diabetic ulcers.

“Specifically on the foot, if you get an injury there or you begin to get an ulcer that is basically an open wound that won’t heal, these amniotic membrane grafts are placed on these wounds and they facilitate rapid healing,” Pfeiffer said. “They’re full of tissues and cells that stimulate the body to heal.”

The cells can be cut down to the size of contact lenses and used in eye surgery.

When mothers donate their placentas, the grafts made from their donation often end up being used for other patients at those same hospitals, Pfeiffer said.

“This is absolutely the patient’s choice,” Marcrander said, saying the process is like blood donation. Patients are asked what they would like to do with their placenta before giving birth. If they choose to donate them, and if the birth was a healthy one, the donated material is refrigerated for transportation.

Some tissue is used for research purposes on site, others Cardinal Biologicals sends to process elsewhere where researchers make skin grafts and other such procedures out of the placenta’s cells.

Marcrander estimated some 70% of placentas after birth are in a state to be donated at Mercy St. Louis. Once patients become aware of the program, around half of those whose placentas can be used agree to donate them.

“These tissues, the placenta and the umbilical cord, are considered transplantable by the FDA. There are very strict requirements on what information we have to get from the patient, how we process tissue and who we sell it to,” Pfeiffer said. “… These companies, they spent millions of dollars doing clinical trials, much like a pharmaceutical product, they have to test them, make sure they’re effective.”

Reticence toward donation is often based on what people hear from third-party sources, Pfeiffer suggested. As birth tissue donation grows more common, he said he thinks people will become more comfortable with the idea of it, and the Catholic Health World article could aid in that. Pfeiffer described the system as a winning one for patients, hospital systems and Cardinal.

“For us, it’s all about the patient. If we’re fortunate enough to get a mother to donate, they are helping other people,” he said.

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