Report proposes structure for national network of cord blood stem ...( ly 11700 Americans who could benefit f...)

Three-quarters of the patients who require a transplant of HPCs do not have a relative whose cells would be a suitable match and must turn to public bone marrow donor registries or umbilical cord blood banks for donated cells. By increasing the size and quality of the cord blood inventory, nearly 90 percent of all patients who need a transplant should be able to find a suitable match from either cord blood banks or marrow donor registries, the report says.

The new National Cord Blood Policy Board should be established at the level of the office of the DHHS secretary to ensure that it is distanced from the day-to-day concerns of other parts of the department responsible for managing relationships with and funding for bone marrow donor programs and cord blood programs, the committee urged. The board should routinely review the results of cord blood stem cell transplants and guide DHHS and the cord blood banking program on procedures and standards for banking and allocation and on any changes to the inventory of cord blood units.

Decisions about which source of HPCs to tap must be made on a case-by-case basis and driven by the patient's needs, the report notes. To that end, the board should actively encourage collaboration between marrow donor registries and cord blood banks, as well as support cord blood banking's emergence as a transplant option.

Although the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) and other organizations have developed several of the components necessary to manage daily coordination of banking and allocation on a large scale, no organization currently has all the necessary capabilities to serve as the Cord Blood Coordinating Cen
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Contact: Christine Stencel or Chris Dobbins
news@nas.edu
202-334-2138
The National Academies
14-Apr-2005