The New York Blood Center's National Cord Blood Program has provided cord blood units for about one-third of the world's transplants of unrelated cord blood to date. With indispensable help from Transplant Center staff, we have garnered extensive data on clinical outcomes from these transplants. This information has helped us evaluate factors that affect transplant outcome in both children and adults. Results have been published in several medical journals (to see the list of publications, visit the News & Articles section).

Current research collaborations include:

Clinical Outcome:

With the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry (IBMTR) - a comparison of unrelated cord blood and bone marrow transplants in children. Presented by Mary Horowitz, MD at the 2001 meeting of the American Society of Hematology (ASH).

Also with IBMTR - a comparison of unrelated cord blood transplants in adults. Presented by Mary Laughlin, MD at the 2003 ASH meeting.

Transplants in Adults:

With several transplant centers, we are helping to evaluate strategies to overcome the cell dose limitations of cord blood transplantation in adults. One approach is to transplant multiple cord blood units at the same time. Multiple unit transplants are also being tried with a reduced, less toxic conditioning regimen (Ref: Barker JN, et al; Blood, 2003).

Another strategy is to transplant cord blood simultaneously with T-cell depleted, half-matched (haploidentical) bone marrow (Ref: Fernandez MN, et al; Experimental Hematology, 2003). The T-cell depleted, haploidentical bone marrow engrafts quickly, providing early protection from infection. The cord blood eventually also engrafts and takes over, giving the patient the long-term benefit of a lower risk of graft vs. host disease.

Expansion of Stem Cell Numbers in Cord Blood Units:

Scientists hope to find a method to increase the number of true stem cells so that cord blood transplants will engraft faster. If successful, expanding the number of stem cells would especially benefit full-grown adolescents and adults who require large numbers of stem cells in order to engraft quickly. We are collaborating in two clinical studies of cell expansion.

1. With ViaCell - a study to assess the safety of transplantation with cord blood stem cells that have been allowed to multiply in a laboratory using ViaCell's selective amplification method.

2. With GamidaCell - a study to assess the safety of growing cells in the laboratory to expand the number of stem cells using the GamidaCell method.