[Regenerative medicine for blood diseases]

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation, a front-runner of regenerative medicine, has been used widely for treatment of leukemia, lymphoma, and severe aplastic anemia. In the past 10 years, more than 14,000 transplants have been performed in Japan by using stem cells from either bone marrow, cord blood, or peripheral blood. Establishment of Japan Bone Marrow Bank and Japan Cord Blood Network has promoted stem cell transplantation from unrelated donors; 4,275 bone marrow and more than 700 cord blood transplantation as of July 31, 2002. There are several problems that remains to be solved, including expansion of donor pool size for both bone marrow and cord blood and financial backup of Japan Bone Marrow Program and Japan Cord Blood Network.