Cord blood transplant resources and research

NMDP is a global leader in research and advancing the future of care. We partner with leading institutions, physicians and cell and gene therapy providers to advance cellular therapy research. As the leader in outcomes analysis, we identify emerging trends and provide tools to help you make optimal donor selections and inform treatment strategies.

Cord blood unit selection and transplant support

• Cord Blood Consultation service
  Our Cord Blood Consultation service provides you direct contact with an experienced cord blood transplant physician who works in a transplant center. The physician can help you select the best CBU for your patient and discuss conditioning regimens and prophylactic antivirals and antifungals.
• Donor and Cord Blood unit selection guidelines
  NMDP and CIBMTR® (Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research®) published guidelines for the selection of unrelated donors and cord blood units for hematopoietic cell transplantation, based on current evidence-based research including non-HLA criteria such as CBU quality and cell dose. NMDP Director of Laboratory Services, Jason Dehn, and CIBMTR® Scientific Director, Bronwen Shaw, MD, PhD summarized the guidelines for you in an on-demand webinar. 
  
  The American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy’s (ASTCT) Cord Blood Special Interest Group published guidelines for cord blood unit selection from a transplant center perspective.
• Search Strategy Advice
  Save time and expense on your donor and CBU search when you tap into our free Search Strategy Advice. With each request, our HLA experts provide you with a prioritized list of potential matches and detailed typing recommendations to help you select the best donor or CBU for your patient.

Cure-Ready CBUs

Cure-Ready CBUs provide you with access to ethnically diverse units with high TNC/CD34+ counts. These units have been confirmatory typed using high-resolution next generation sequencing (NGS) typing from segments integral to the association unit, and release testing/potency testing has been completed. The advance release testing eliminates the typical 14-day wait for testing results, reducing time to transplant.

Cure-Ready CBUs are flagged in Search Strategy Advice reports and will be indicated in a future release of MatchSource.

Cord blood bank Global Search Tool(PDF)
Access an overview of domestic and international cord blood banks to help you select the best cord blood unit for your patients. The report includes identification codes; the median turnaround time of typing and shipment requests; and location of source in the Unified List Type in MatchSource.

“How to” guide to cord blood transplantation
Optimal Practices in Unrelated Donor Cord Blood Transplantation for Hematologic Malignancies offers cord blood transplantation best practices from patient and cord blood unit selection through post-transplant care.

Published in Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation, the how-to guide is based on the best practices of six U.S. transplant centers with experience in cord blood transplantation. (Barker JN, Kurtzberg J, Ballen K, Boo M, Brunstein C, Cutler C, Horwitz M, Milano F, Olson A, Spellman S, Wagner JE, Delaney C, Shpall E. Optimal Practices in Unrelated Donor Cord Blood Transplantation for Hematologic Malignancies. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant. 2017 Jun;23(6):882-896. doi: 10.1016/j.bbmt.2017.03.006. Epub 2017 Mar 6. PMID: 28279825; PMCID: PMC5543989.)

Standard operating procedures for receipt and thaw of CBUs as well as guidelines for graft infusion are a critical component of cord blood. Accepted transplant center thaw procedures, post-thaw graft evaluation, patient care during infusion, and suggestions for management of associated problems are outlined in these guidelines published by ASTCT’s Cord Blood Special Interest Group.

Extending transplant availability to more patients

• Availability of cord blood extends allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplant access to racial and ethnic minorities (Barker JN, et al., Biol Blood Marrow Transplant, 2020)
• HLA match likelihoods for hematopoietic stem-cell grafts in the U.S. registry (Gragert N, et al., N Engl J Med, 2014)
• The influence of stem cell source on transplant outcomes for pediatric patients with acute myeloid leukemia (Keating AK, et al., Blood Advances, 2019)
• Low 5-year health care burden after umbilical cord blood transplantation (Garcia J, et al., Blood Advances, 2021)

Cord blood transplant outcomes

Improving speed to transplant

• Outcomes of UCB transplantation are comparable in FLT3+ AML: results of CIBMTR, EUROCORD and EBMT collaborative analysis (Ustun C, et al., Leukemia, 2017)

Lower chronic graft-versus-host disease incidence

• GVHD after umbilical cord blood transplantation for acute leukemia: an analysis of risk factors and effect on outcomes (Chen Y-B, et al., Bone Marrow Transplant, 2016)
• Risk factors for acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation with umbilical cord blood and matched sibling donors (Lazaryan A, et al., Biol Blood Marrow Transplant, 2016)

Greater graft-versus-leukemia effect

• Cord-blood transplantation in patients with minimal residual disease (Milano F, et al., N Engl J Med, 2016)

Understanding main technical procedures by public cord blood banks

• Worldwide survey on key indicators for public cord blood banking technologies: By the World Marrow Donor Association Cord Blood Working Group (Joris M, et al. Stem Cells Translational Medicine, 2020)

Questions

Complete the form below with your question. One of our team members will be in touch with you within 5 business days.