Cord Blood
March 4, 2008
I spoke with Dr. R (at Hutchinson in Seattle) today. Although there were initially 18 potential matching donors for me in the National Marrow Donor database of 9 million total donors, Hutchinson’s testing of my HLA and alleles (some of which are uncommon) indicates that it will be difficult to find a good match. Accordingly, Dr. R and colleagues now think that my best chance is with cord blood (i.e., stem cells collected, with parental consent, from the umbilical cord and placenta immediately after the birth of a baby). Cord blood stem cells can be partially mismatched with my HLA type, and the available cord blood is already in frozen storage. Since the cord blood stem cells are banked and ready to be infused, it suddenly looks like my SCT may soon be underway . I hope to know more shortly about when I need to go to Seattle, but I’m now thinking it could be in the next few weeks.
March 9, 2008 at 7:21 am
Roger: Is the cord blood a one-time, “good forever” transplant, or will it need to be repeated in the future? Also, is this a way to buy time to find a bone marrow transplant, or cord blood in lieu of that?
My thoughts and prayers are with you, Roger.
March 9, 2008 at 10:11 am
Hi Bill,
While none of the sources of donated stem cells come with a warranty (if you will), the hope is that it will be a “one-and-done” procedure. I’ve seen accounts from several folks who have gone for a second SCT after the first one didn’t work or after they suffered a relapse, so it can be done again if it doesn’t work the first time.
The best matched stems cells tend to come from siblings (if the recipient has a sibling match). Matched unrelated donors have until fairly recently been the best option for people who don’t have a related match, but cord blood is a great option for people who have trouble finding an unrelated match. Some interesting things about the cord blood: the stem cells from cord blood require a less precise match than those from adult unrelated donors (4 of 6 for cord blood instead of 6/6 for adult unrelated). The cord blood results tend to be comparable to matched unrelated donors in terms of overall success rates. Because the volume of cord blood donations is pretty small, it generally takes two units (from separate donors) to make it work. One cord blood recipient who has blogged about her experience had stems cells from donors in Colorado and Australia, if memory serves: http://www.pj-plog.blogspot.com/
Thanks for writing. I hope all is well.
R