Stored cord blood samples have been used for transplants in both children and adults having malignant or non-malignant diseases. Over 400,000 cord blood units are now stored for use in more than 100 quality controlled public international cord blood banks. These events further emphasize the importance of umbilical cord blood banking for transplantation in the medical field and the growing interest with 330 published articles retrieved by online searching of the PubMED website ( on Januusing the term “umbilical cord blood banking”. Later, Rubenstein and others were the first to establish an unrelated cord blood bank from voluntary donors and then used the blood units from the bank for unrelated cord blood transplantation. The results, to date, are encouraging and appear at least comparable to bone marrow or peripheral blood progenitor cells as the donor source for transplants. More than 25,000 allogeneic cord blood transplantations have been performed worldwide since the first cord blood transplantation in 1988 in a patient from Paris, France with Fanconi anemia using an identical HLA matched sibling. Thus, umbilical cord blood as single or double unit transplants, provide a potentially vast source of hematopoietic stem cells, and represent a valuable alternative for stem cell transplantation needs worldwide and with the added potential of decreased chronic graft versus host disease (GvHD) compared with bone marrow and peripheral blood progenitor cell donors. There is a continual need for suitable donors for one third of all patients in need of bone marrow transplants in which no available human leukocyte antigen (HLA) matched donors are found. Double umbilical cord blood grafts, that use cord blood units from two donors, mitigate cell dose limitations for larger children and adults with malignant disorders. Cord blood is considered a treatment option in pediatric and adult patients with hematologic malignancies and disorders (leukemia, thalassemia, sickle cell disease, etc.), bone marrow failures, inherited metabolic disorders, immunological defects and other genetic diseases. It has been used successfully as an alternative to bone marrow or peripheral blood progenitor cells for transplantation purposes and developing into a new field of study in medicine for treating diseases.
Umbilical cord blood can be used as a source of primitive hematopoietic stem and pluripotent progenitor cells in clinical application to reconstitute the hematopoietic system and/or to restore immunological function in vivo.
0 kommentar(er)
