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For those hematologists who are not familiar with cord blood transplantation and who would like to quickly review the field, the Forum recommends the following:
The November 25, 2004 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (Two articles on umbilical cord blood transplantation for adults and an editorial). In the Annotated Bibliography, these articles are reviewed in II. Transplantation of Adults using Cord Blood Units. Click HERE.
Information on the effectiveness of double cord blood transplants in adults, see the following article: "Transplantation of two partially HLA-matched umbilical cord blood units to enhance engraftment in adults with hematologic malignancy." Barker et al. Blood 2005;105:1343-1347. This article is reviewed in III. Multi-Cord Transplants. Click HERE.
For a recent comprehensive review, see "Umbilical cord blood transplantation." Rocha et al. Curr Opin Hematol. 2004;11:375-85 This article is reviewed in I. Recent Reviews (citation #2). Click HERE.
Patients in need of a hematopoietic cell transplant will have a matched-related donor about one-third of the time. For those without a family member to serve as a donor, a marrow or peripheral blood cell product from a matched-unrelated donor can be obtained from donor registries (e.g., NMDP) about 50% of the time. This leaves thousands of patients each year who have an indication for a transplant but who cannot find a traditional donor. Cord blood transplants require less stringent HLA-matching and are therefore available for most patients in need. Should patients who do not have a family member donor and who cannot obtain a suitable matched-unrelated donor in a registry receive a cord blood transplant? Among the alternative options is to not perform a transplant even for patients with bona fide indications.
The data concerning the effectiveness of cord blood transplants (survival, GVHD, availability, transplantation of adults, etc) are encouraging and should be reviewed with the above considerations in mind. (One must also keep in mind that for some patients, particularly in the pediatric age group, many transplant physicians consider cord bloods to be the hematopoietic stem cell source of choice.)
Click on any of the following topics, including any of the recent and authoritative reviews to evaluate current data. You may also search for any topic and/or author by clicking on the SEARCH link in the navigation menu to access our comprehensive site search feature.
Please note that a link to an online abstract or full text version of each article is provided, if publicly available. Individuals with subscriptions to the journal may have online access to full text articles with a member sign-in on the journal's website. ASH members have online access to all full text articles published in Blood (initial sign-in required).
CordBloodForum.org would appreciate comments and questions.