Successful Use Of Expanded Umbilical-Cord Blood Units

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First Successful Use Of Expanded Umbilical-Cord Blood Units To Treat

Leukemia

" the first use of a method to vastly expand the number of stem/progenitor

cells from a unit of cord blood in the laboratory that were then infused

into patients resulting in successful and rapid engraftment.

The relatively small number of stem cells in cord blood units (about

one-10th the number a patient receives from a conventional transplant) has

been a reason that cord blood transplants take much longer to engraft than

standard stem cell transplants from donors. The longer the engraftment

takes, the higher the risk is that immunocompromised patients will acquire

life-threatening infections because they have essentially no white blood

cells to fight them. "

http://bit.ly/4s2Lye

Karl