ABSTRACT
Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) is being increasingly used in clinical medicine and in many cases is the only treatment offering long-term cure for otherwise fatal diseases. In 1957 Thomas and coworkers from Seatde first showed that large quantities of bone marrow (BM) could be obtained and safely infused into humans.1 Historically, this approach was pioneered, after early failures, using BM cells obtained from HLA-matched sibling donors as the source of the graft. These grafts are available to only one-quarter to one-third of suitable patients, and considerable effort has been exerted to find alternative donors for patients lacking a matched sibling donor. Approaches have included the use of hematopoietic stem cells ob tained from matched unrelated donors (obtained through national and international marrow registries), partially mismatched related marrow donors, placental and umbilical cord blood and autologous marrow or peripheral blood (PB).1
