Possible advantages of umbilical cord blood (UBC) compared with bone marrow as a source of unrelated haemopoietic stem cells for transplantation (SCT)
| Advantages quoted for UCB | Comment |
|---|---|
| CMV, cytomegalovirus; GVHD, graft versus host disease; HLA, human major histocompatibility complex antigens. | |
| Rapid stem cell donor selection | Yes if “donor” is a newborn HLA identical sibling. |
| Potentially, searches of unrelated cord blood banks should be rapid. | |
| However, controlled clinical data comparing efficiency of UCB banks with volunteer stem cell donor registry searches are not yet available | |
| Negligible transmission of CMV to the recipient | True, because <0.1% of healthy neonates are CMV positive, compared with 10–60% of adult volunteer donors |
| No donor morbidity | True, as long as UCB is collected without influencing the management of mother or child |
| Enhances availability of unrelated stem cell donations to non-white patients | Some data to support. |
| UCB donation is more acceptable than volunteer bone marrow donation to some non-white ethnic groups | |
| UCB transplants are associated with less GVHD than SCT from older donors | HLA partially mismatched UCB transplants are less alloreactive than adult donor stem cell transplants (SCT). Retrospective cohort controlled data support this, but only after HLA identical sibling SCT12 |