The Community Blood Bank’s major construction project is complete and the Community Blood Bank is the first blood bank in the entire United States to ‘go live’ with the MPX platform from Roche.

Last summer the blood bank’s lab was expanded by 2000 square feet to accommodate the new testing equipment. In December of 2008, CBB added the Roche S201 Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) equipment to complete the donor screening package. Initially starting with testing for West Nile Virus the CBB has since expanded to include the multiplex assay for HIV/HCV/HBV NAT. Prior to receipt of the Roche S201 this testing had been outsourced to a blood center in Florida. Bringing this technology in-house reduces the time it takes from blood to go from a donor to a local patient by half (1 full day) and saves the blood bank about $80,000 per year in specimen shipping costs.

Mayor Joe Sinnott will join executives from Roche in cutting the ribbon to open this new testing platform at the Community Blood Bank located at 2646 Peach St in Erie. The event is being catered by Calamari’s and there will be giant cake to celebrate.

“This is a huge achievement by the staff in our laboratory,” said Dan Desrochers, director of marketing at the Community Blood Bank. “Local
patients and our local hospitals will benefit for years to come from this project.”

The Community Blood Bank is the exclusive supplier of blood to all the Hospitals in Erie, Warren, Mc Kean, Elk and Potter Counties in Pennsylvania and now supplies over 95% of all the blood used in all the hospitals in Chautauqua, Cattaraugus, and Allegany Counties in Western New York. In 2008, over 10,000 patients received blood or blood products that were donated to the Community Blood Bank.