Since its first successful use more than three decades ago, umbilical cord blood has become an increasingly important source of stem cells for transplants for bone marrow failures, leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia, and other life-threatening diseases. Over 40,000 cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide for a wide variety of malignant and non-malignant disorders. The first successful cord blood stem cell transplant was performed in 1988 as a treatment for a 5-year-old boy with Fanconi Anemia; his newborn sister’s umbilical cord blood saved his life. Today, more than 80 diseases have FDA-approved cord blood stem cell transplant treatments. [Read more…]

Cancer treatment using very high-dose chemotherapy or radiation therapy often results in severe injury to a patient’s blood-forming cells, called their hematopoietic (“blood formation”) system. Therefore, radiation therapy is soon followed by hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), which is a method of reconstructing a patient’s blood system that has been destroyed by cancer treatment. Cord blood can also be used as a source of stem cells for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), providing an important alternative to the traditional options of peripheral blood and bone marrow transplant. Importantly, bone marrow and peripheral blood require full tissue matching for use in HSCT, while umbilical cord blood only requires partial matching. [Read more…]