In this issue of the journal, Kindwall-Keller and Ballen present atargeted overview of the advantages, disadvantages, and milestonesof cord blood transplantation over the past 30 years.1 First they highlightthe advantages of cord blood as a source of donor cells for hematopoietictransplantation, including off the shelf availability, increasedtolerance for HLA mismatching, lower incidence of acute and chronicGvHD, lower risk of infectious disease transmission, and improvedprotection against leukemic relapse in high risk patient populations.They also make several important points about the limitations of cordblood in transplantation, highlighting slower engraftment, delayedimmune reconstitution, and cost amongst others. Overall, the report issomewhat pessimistic about the overall outlook of this novel graftsource.
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