Unrelated donor hematopoietic cell transplantation: marrow or umbilical cord blood?

Abstract

Despite the development of large international volunteer donor registries, still less than 50% of URD searches result in identification and availability of a suitably matched bone marrow (BM) graft.²⁵ Donor searches for recipients not of Northern-European descent result in even lower success.²⁵ These limitations have given impetus for the identification of alternative sources of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs).