Umbilical cord blood (UCB) remains an important alternative source of hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) for allogeneic transplantation when suitable HLA-matched donors are unavailable. Cord blood (CB) offers many benefits including rapid availability, absence of risk to the donor, and a low incidence of graft-versus-host disease. However, although the overall survival of patients receiving unrelat...

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation is a treatment option for malignant and non-malignant disorders in children. For children with no HLA-matched sibling or related stem cell donors, there is the option of unrelated cord blood donors. At the University of Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) in Kuala Lumpur, the first unrelated cord blood transplantation (CBT) was performed in October 1997. All unrela...

Children who would benefit from a haematopoietic stem cell transplantation often lacked a compatible sibling donor. Unrelated cord blood transplantation was offered as an alternative donor source for patients with a variety of malignant and non-malignant diseases who had no further treatment options. Cord blood units were sourced from various international cord blood registries. The median nucl...

In recent years, umbilical cord blood, which contains a rich source of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells, has been used successfully as an alternative allogeneic donor source to treat a variety of pediatric genetic, hematologic, immunologic, and oncologic disorders. Because there is diminished risk of graft-versus-host disease after transplantation of cord stem cells using matched related...