The first cord blood transplant was performed in 1988 to treat a case of Fanconi anemia [1]. The donor was the patient's HLA-identical sister who was known by pre-natal diagnosis to be HLA identical and not affected by the Fanconi mutation. The donor's cord blood was collected and cryopreserved at birth. In a medical paper published in 2005, the researchers tracked the status of this patient and reported:
The transplant was successful without graft-versus-host diseases and the patient is currently alive and free of disease more than 15 years after transplant, with full hematologic and immunologic donor reconstitution [2].
Since 1988, over 6,000 cord blood transplants had been successfully performed worldwide according to a medical journal [3]. Statistics posted on Netcord recently (March 2007) recorded a total of 5,452 cord blood transplants being performed successfully in an almost 50:50 ratio on adults and children using its inventory [4].
