Umbilical Cord Blood Saves Life

March 18, 2007

Only one in four patients who need a bone marrow transplant for a blood cancer finds a suitable donor in their family, but cord blood donation offers great potential in speeding this process up. A 27-year-old woman got acute secondary leukemia that endangered her life. Since she needed 300 million cells per kilogram, the amount in a single umbilical cord after delivery of a baby was not enough.

Professor Arnon Nagler, the head of the hemo-oncology and bone marrow transplant unit at Sheba Hospital, said these transplants have been performed in a few centers around the world only in the last two years. “This is a revolution on technical grounds, because the stem cells in umbilical cords are available, and it makes it easier to find suitable donors. Until now, we transplanted stem cells from umbilical cord blood only into children, and one dose at a time.”

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