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Leukemia Leukemia Treatment

Umbilical cord blood can help people fight cancer


When a person undergoes high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiation treatments for the treatment of leukemia, lymphoma and some other diseases, blood cells produced in the marrow are destroyed. Infusing stem cells back into the body from a variety of sources can help rebuild the ability to manufacture healthy blood cells. Doctors can collect blood or bone marrow from a patient beforehand so that it can be infused back later after treatment is completed. This is called an autologous transplant. An allogeneic transplant, however, occurs when another person—a sibling, parent, or child—provides the blood or bone marrow. When an allogeneic transplant is performed, great care must be taken to make sure there is a good tissue match between donor and patient. That's why blood relatives are often used as donors; their tissue is more likely to match than an unrelated person. Being a blood relative, however, is no guarantee of getting a good match. Researchers are now looking into another source of blood cells for transplantation: umbilical cords. Cord blood is also rich in stem cells. Still, cord blood transplantation still has some hurdles to overcome. It is a challenge to get enough stem cells for an adult transplant due to the small volume of blood harvested from an umbilical cord. This may mean that the transplant may not take hold quickly enough, leaving a patient vulnerable to infection.