Human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6) infection in recipients of cord blood stem cell transplants (CBSCTs) was estimated by semiquantitative and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and reverse-transcription PCR. Of the CBSCT recipients, 7 (70%) of 10 had active HHV-6 infection after transplantation, and all 7 were inferred from their age to have already had a primary infection. Because...

Heart failure is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. End stage disease often requires heart transplantation, which is hampered by donor organ shortage. Tissue engineering represents a promising alternative approach for cardiac repair. For the generation of artificial heart muscle tissue several cell types, scaffold materials and bioreactor designs are under investigation. In this revi...

Immunosuppressive therapy and stem cell transplantation from an HLA-identical donor are the major effective treatments for severe aplastic anemia. However, treatments still need to be developed for patients who do not have a HLA-identical donor and have not shown a clinical response to immunosuppressive therapy. We herein report on 2 patients in whom this problem could be overcome by transplant...

This policy statement is intended to provide information to guide pediatricians, obstetricians, and other medical specialists and health care providers in responding to parents' questions about cord blood donation and banking as well as the types (public versus private) and quality of cord blood banks. Cord blood is an excellent source of stem cells for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation i...

Survival of patients with multiple myeloma has improved substantially because of availability of new therapies including autotransplants, immunomodulating drugs and proteasome-inhibitors. Second primary cancers have emerged as an important determinant of morbidity and mortality among cancer survivors. Even though there is an increased risk of new cancers of the lymphoreticular and haematopoetic...

Umbilical cord blood banking efforts have increased dramatically in the past two decades in response to increasing demand for alternative sources of blood stem cells to support patients requiring hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Transplant centres have accumulated increasing expertise in their understanding of umbilical cord blood characteristics that are associated with improved outcom...

Blastic natural killer (NK) cell neoplasms are rare, highly aggressive malignancies with a poor prognosis. They have a predilection for the skin, and disseminate rapidly into the blood, bone marrow, lymph nodes, and extranodal organs.1 Because of their rarity, there is no standard treatment. Chemotherapy alone does not result in long-term remissions2; therefore, stem cell transplantation is ess...

Umbilical cord blood transplantation from HLA-identical siblings provides good results in children. These results support targeted efforts to bank family cord blood units that can be used for a sibling diagnosed with a disease which can be cured by allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation or for research that investigates the use of allogeneic or autologous cord blood cells. Over 500 ...

Cord blood hematopoietic stem cells (CB-HSCs) transplantation has been increasing gradually with facing the limitation of insufficient quantity of HSCs in each CB unit. Therefore, efficient expansion methods which can maintain stem cell characteristics are needed. In this study, umbilical CB-CD34(+) cells were cultured in two different cytokine cocktails: 4 factors (4F = Flt3-L, SCF, IL-6, and ...