umbilical blood therapy

Use of umbilical cord blood cells to establish functioning bone marrow in patients whose abilities to produce blood cells have been destroyed by disease, radiation, or chemotherapy.

Cord blood transplants have one main advantage over bone-marrow transplants: they have been successful so far even where there is a mismatch of tissue type, so there is no delay in searching for an appropriate donor. The first transplant was carried out in Paris 1989; 40 such operations had been carried out by 1994, all on children.