European organization for cord blood banking

Cord blood transplant has been performed in children with malignant and nonmalignant hematological disorders. Most often, the donor was an HLA-identical or a partially mismatched sibling. The results seem to demonstrate that one cord blood contains enough hematopoietic stem cells to reconstitute the marrow in a child, the incidence of graft vs. host disease (GVHD) has been very low in matched transplants, and the immune reconstitution has not been different from a bone marrow transplant. In Paris, seven children have received an HLA-identical sibling cord transplant; five are alive and well, and two had no engraftment. Several questions remain: results in adults, use of cord blood for mis-matched or matched unrelated transplants, standardization of methods of collection, cryopreservation, and banking. A European cord blood banking group has been created to coordinate this research.