Human cord blood: a source of transplantable stem cells?

In a preliminary study we have shown that optimally collected human umbilical cord (HUC) blood cells grow significantly better in long term cultures (LTC) than normal adult marrow cells (NBM) p = 0.0007. The LTC findings are supported by the observation in clonogenic assay that a similar number of GM-CFC colonies can be grown from HUC blood and NBM mononuclear cells (MNC). Also there is a trend towards a higher proportion of primitive erythroid (BFU-E) and primitive megakaryocyte colonies (MK-CFC containing greater than 20 cells) in HUC blood compared with NBM. We suggest that further work on the feasibility of a HLA typed, cryopreserved HUC blood bank as a source of unrelated haemopoietic 'stem' cells for clinical transplantation is indicated.