A new University of Minnesota-led study credits umbilical cord blood with yet another impressive feat: children with leukemia did just as well with transplants of cord blood as with transplanted bone marrow. To top it off, the cord blood didn’t need to be matched to the recipient, unlike marrow. As long as the mismatch rate was low and the number of cord blood cells sufficient, recipients had the same five-year leukemia-free survival rates as those receiving bone marrow.
The study, which appeared in the June 9 issue of the journal Lancet, means a lot to patients in need of transplants: according to the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) only 30 percent of patients who require marrow or blood cell transplants find a matched donor in their family. The other 70 percent may turn to the NMDP for an unrelated match. For minority patients, finding a perfect marrow match is exceedingly rare, making the U’s study even more important. With 300,000 cord blood units banked for donation so far, doctors are optimistic that many patients who can’t find perfect marrow donors will benefit from the study’s findings.
“What this study suggests is that cord blood need not be considered a second line of therapy any longer,” said John E. Wagner, M.D., professor of pediatrics and director of the University of Minnesota Medical School’s division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology and Bone Marrow Transplantation in a statement. “For the first time, the timing of transplantation can be dictated by the patient’s needs, as opposed to the availability of the matched bone marrow.”
Want to donate your baby’s cord blood? Organizations like the NMDP and the Umbilical Cord Transplantation Program at the U collect donated cord blood at no cost to parents. Donations are frozen and stored at a cord blood bank for future use by doctors all over the world who have access to the NMDP registry of donors and cord blood units. For more information, visit Marrow.org.
