Cord blood transplantation can be a substitute treatment for Bone Marrow Transplantation (or BMT). The cord blood technique was first used successfully in France in 1988. Since then, approximately 2000 cord blood transplants have been performed worldwide. Australia started collecting cord blood in 1995 by the Australian Cord Blood Bank (ACBB) in Sydney. Community and charitable organizations have funded the cord blood donation program to date.
At present, it costs from $800 - 900 AUD to collect, process and store one unit of cord blood (but there is no cost involved for the woman who donates her cord blood). There is a national target to collect around 20,000 blood units over the next 3 years and at least 2,000 indigenous (aboriginal) cord blood donations.
The advantages of cord blood transplants when compared to the traditional bone marrow transplants include:
Easier to match
More compatible
Easier to obtain, quicker to use
Easier to match. Cord Blood Transplantation of stem cells is an alternative treatment to bone marrow transplantation. Cord blood has the advantage of being much more versatile, (or being easier to find a suitable match with a donor) than bone marrow, because it can be more readily used without being exactly matched. This means that up to 80 to 90% of people needing a transplant can find a suitable donor using cord blood, compared to only about 50% of people using a bone marrow transplant. (This is despite there being about 5 million registered donors on an International Marrow Donor Registry and about 120,000 registered donors on the Australian Registry).
One of the other advantages of cord blood is that if many parents donate their cord blood, there will be an increase in the amount of donations available and a wider range of tissue types from different ethnic groups of people. Matching donated cord blood with a person that needs it, is easier if they both belong to the same ethnic group.