Hal Broxmeyer talks about cord blood stem cells

Hal E. Broxmeyer, founder of the world's first cord blood bank, gave a talk at a breakfast seminar recently on the current state of the art in cord blood banking and cord blood stem cell transplants. To date, more than 25,000 cord blood transplants have been performed for a wide range of disorders.

As Broxmeyer explained, there was no cord blood field prior to the mid-1980s. The first cord blood transplant — an HLA-matched sibling transplant for Fanconi anemia — took place in Paris in October 1988 under the direction of Eliane Gluckman, MD. Since then, the medical field has slowly accepted the possible potential of cord blood stem cell transplantation. 

Broxmeyer discussed current studies and follow-up papers demonstrating enhancement of homing/engraftment of human CD34+ cells in cord blood and also predicted a large increase in numbers of CB transplantations, as well as an increase in cord blood banking in general.

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