ABSTRACT
Umbilical cord blood and its surrounding tissue have become increasingly prominent as a source rich in different types of stem cells. In 1974, it was shown that cord blood contains functional hematopoietic progenitors (Knudtzon 1974). Additional groups have demonstrated that multilineage colony-forming units were present in cord blood and that cryopreservation was possible, thus setting the stage for cord blood as a suitable source for clinical applications (Koike 1983; Nakahata and Ogawa 1982). In 1989, cord blood from an HLA-(human leukocyte antigen-) identical sibling was used for the hematopoietic reconstitution of a young patient with Fanconi’s anemia (Gluckman et al. 1989). Since then, numerous studies using cord blood have demonstrated that it contains hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) capable of engrafting patients with hematologic diseases. It has emerged that cord blood grafts have multiple unique clinical advantages compared to bone marrow (BM) and mobilize peripheral blood stem cell sources. These include a greater tolerance for HLA mismatches, thus increasing signi‹cantly the donor pool for patients lacking HLA-matched donors; reduced graft-versushost disease (GvHD) severity, with maintained graft-versus-leukemia (GVL) effect; collection without danger to the donor; and ease of banking (Laughlin et al. 2004; Rubinstein 2006). Particularly, the advantage of easy collection and banking capability make umbilical cord blood an attractive source for cellular therapies. More than 8,000 cord blood transplants had been performed by
CONTENTS
5.1 Introduction .................................................................................................. 87 5.2 Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Hematopoietic Stem Cells ................... 89 5.3 Umbilical Cord Blood-Derived Endothelial Progenitor Cells ...............90 5.4 Mesenchymal Stem Cells ............................................................................ 92 5.5 The Unrestricted Somatic Stem Cell ......................................................... 93 5.6 Conclusions ................................................................................................... 94 References ............................................................................................................... 94
2007, in large majority for hematologic diseases, with only rare occasions of donor-derived tumor development (Harris 2008; Matsunaga et al. 2005).
