About Hoxworth

Hoxworth’s Mission

To enhance the wellbeing of patients in our service area by assuring a reliable and economical supply of the safest possible blood, by providing innovative hemotherapy services, and by promoting research and education programs in transfusion medicine.

Hoxworth’s Vision

Hoxworth Blood Center will be recognized for saving and improving lives in our community with safe and reliable blood and innovative cell therapies.

Hoxworth At A Glance

Hoxworth Blood Center, University of Cincinnati, was founded in December of 1938 by Dr. Paul I Hoxworth. Hoxworth Blood Center is the only University-affiliated blood center in the United States, and the second oldest blood bank in the country.  Hoxworth Blood Center has become an internationally recognized leader in transfusion medicine; today, Hoxworth Blood Center has a staff of more than 270 full and part-time employees in 21 departments and a complement of more than 300 volunteers.

Hoxworth Blood Center: Our Role in the Community

Hoxworth Blood Center is the only steward of the local blood supply, providing blood, plasma, platelets, and other blood products to more than 30 area hospitals. Hoxworth Blood Center is the only organization in the Greater Cincinnati area that exists to fill that need.  Aside from collecting, testing, and distributing blood from volunteer donors to area hospitals and medical centers, Hoxworth Blood Center has become an internationally recognized leader in transfusion medicine, and offers a number of direct patient care services and laboratory services.

Heather Bennett, a nurse and blood recipient, understands the need for blood better than anyone. Due to complications during childbirth, Heather required 41 units of blood products at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

“Without a doubt, if I was unable to receive the blood that my body needed, I would not be here today,” says Heather.  “I am so thankful that there are amazing, selfless, lifesaving heroes out there that are willing to donate their blood. Without these donations, I wouldn’t be here to celebrate life’s many tiny miracles. I wouldn’t be here to celebrate Christmas with my kids, to bake their cupcakes and celebrate their birthdays, to go school shopping with them, or to tuck them into bed. I wouldn’t be here to watch them grow. Because of the unsung heroes that donate their blood, I get to do all of these things.”

Hoxworth Services

Blood Collection

Every day, countless individuals are helped by the blood we collect from volunteer blood donors—from trauma victims and transplant recipients to sickle cell and cancer patients. There is no artificial substitute for blood, and the need for blood and platelets is constantly growing. Hoxworth operates seven Neighborhood Donor Centers in the Tri-State area, in conjunction with daily mobile blood drives with churches, businesses, rec centers, and other community organizations.

Patient Services

Hoxworth is proud to offer a host of patient services, including red blood cell exchange and plasmapheresis for patients in need of specialized treatment for conditions like sickle cell disease and a variety of autoimmune conditions.

Libby Gerhardt, a Cincinnati native and recent graduate of Mount St. Joseph University, can attest to the lifesaving work done by Hoxworth’s patient services team. For years, Libby suffered from a rare condition called PANDAS, which stands for pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal infections. Plagued by tics resembling obsessive-compulsive disorder and unable to leave her home, her only source of relief came from plasmapheresis at Hoxworth Blood Center.

"I have had PANDAS for seven years now, and the only thing that truly is able to get me through my hardest times is Hoxworth and plasmapheresis," she says. "My future is much brighter and I am much more hopeful because of therapeutic apheresis. It truly has saved my life and given me relief no medicine ever has. I am able to live a normal life because of it, and be who I am instead of who PANDAS turns me into."

Laboratory Services

In addition, Hoxworth Blood Center provides high-level, quality laboratory services for hospital customers within, and outside of, our 18-county service area. Hoxworth boasts an AABB-accredited immunohematology reference laboratory to provide transfusion support services for hospital customers and help meet rare donor requests throughout the nation and the world, as well as a Transplantation Immunology division, a Cellular Therapies laboratory, a Donor Testing laboratory, and a cutting-edge, internationally recognized Research Division.

Research

The goal of the Research Division is to link basic research with clinical care, leading to improved methods that ensure the quality, safety and efficacy of the blood and hematopoietic cell supply. The research program has multiple components, including clinical research, basic biological research, and translational research.

Research from the Division has been pivotal in understanding the processes that allow stem cells to function as blood producers in the bone marrow of people. Signals from the blood-forming environment of the bone marrow have been shown by our investigators to crucially control the formation of blood, and subtle changes in some of these signals translate into bone marrow failure or cancer. Additionally, our Research Division has enhanced safer transfusion through the validation of chemical and filtration methods of pathogen reduction in red cells and platelets, and novel methods for extension of red cell and platelet shelf-life for transfusion. This will help prevent blood shortages (critical during emergency situations with traumas) and improve the quality and efficacy of these blood products when transfused.

Most recently, the Hoxworth Blood Center Research Division has partnered with the United States Department of Defense for the development and clinical trial of a freeze-dried plasma product for use on the battlefield. Hoxworth’s research team completed clinical trials and obtained FDA approval in 2019.

Education

Hoxworth offers a Transfusion Medicine Fellowship that is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). This program is designed to offer physicians' career development training which will enable them to assume leadership positions as Directors/Medical Directors of regional or community blood centers or hospital transfusion services.

The program has seven full-time faculty members, each representing one or more special interests within the general field of Transfusion Medicine. Active research interests of the faculty include cytokine control of hematopoiesis, hemostasis, blood component production and storage and stem cell biology. 

Our Priorities and Plans for the Future

Within Hoxworth Blood Center and in collaboration with our partners Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, we are convinced that the next 10 years will profoundly change the way we practice medicine. The use of novel genomics tools and cell therapy approaches, and the development of “magic bullet” targeted therapies that are highly effective and deprived of major toxicities, are our objectives to help cure disease.

At Hoxworth, the only blood bank affiliated with a tier 1 Research University in the United States, our research teams are committed to performing cutting edge research and pushing the transfusion medicine industry forward. The funds we hope to obtain will be re-invested in our systems to reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of both our blood banking technology and our Research Division. Hoxworth plans to expand our blood collection operations by purchasing more automated blood collection machines and improving our current neighborhood donor centers, as well as funding new and improved lab equipment so that we can help more patients in need and make a bigger impact on the Cincinnati community and beyond.

Additionally, Hoxworth plans to bolster the strength of our Research division to better facilitate the coordination of research projects developed for the advancement of transfusion medicine, including FDA required clinical trials for licensing new transfusion medicine-related products and working on the development of novel cell therapies. Currently, Hoxworth is in the process of working with the United State Department of Defense for the collection of plasma products for use by the military on the battlefield. Our research directly or through multiple scientific collaborations at local, state, national and international levels has made the Hoxworth Blood Center peer recognized nationally and intern­ationally, and we hope to continue this cutting-edge research with your help.