Umbilical cord blood stem cells: what to expect.
Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is a valuable alternative source of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs). It has unique advantages of easy procurement, absence of risk to donors, low risk of transmitting infections, immediate availability, greater tolerance of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) disparity, and lower incidence of inducing severe graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). In the last several years, these features of UCB permit the field of UCB transplantation (UCBT) to move at a faster pace for both children and adults with malignancies and nonmalignancies. However, new strategies and novel developments are expected to improve engraftment and reconstitution, and to enable in utero transplantation for early therapy, as well as to allow the therapy for a wide spectrum of human diseases.
Zhong
Xiao Yan
XY
Laboratory for Gynecologic Oncology, Women's Hospital/Department of Biomedicine, University of Basel, Switzerland. xzhong@uhbs.ch
Zhang
Bei
B
Asadollahi
Reza
R
Low
Shyan Huey
SH
Holzgreve
Wolfgang
W
D000328:Adult; D000818:Animals; D036101:Cord Blood Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data / Q000639:trends*; D005312:Fetal Blood / Q000166:cytology* / Q000502:physiology; D019337:Hematologic Neoplasms / Q000628:therapy; D006412:Hematopoietic Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D007153:Immunologic Deficiency Syndromes / Q000628:therapy; D008659:Metabolic Diseases / Q000628:therapy