The US National Marrow Donor Program role in unrelated donor hematopoietic cell transplantation

Abstract

The National Marrow Donor Program s (NMDP) is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. Established in 1986, the NMDP currently operates the world's largest registry of unrelated adult donors and umbilical cord blood (UCB) units. Since its inception, the NMDP has benefited from continuous financial support provided by the US government through a series of contracts and grant awards. This funding has supported a large network of donor centers and the recruitment of millions of potential adult hematopoietic cell (HC) donors. More recently, the federal government has also supported a national registry for UCB units and expansion of the available UCB inventories. Today, the NMDP registry lists more than 6.7 million adult donors and 68 000 UCB units. Seventy-seven percent (5. NMDP history and statusThe National Marrow Donor Program s (NMDP) is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was established in 1986 through the combined efforts of families and physicians whose goal was a US national registry of adult, volunteer unrelated hematopoietic cell (HC) donors. Initial funding was provided through a grant to the American Red Cross. The history of NMDP's development has been recently reviewed. 1 Currently, the NMDP receives contracts from the US federal government to operate the CW Bill Young Cell Transplantation Program. This new program, named after Congressman Young who has been an ardent supporter of unrelated donor HCT and the NMDP, continues congressional support for a national BM donor registry and additionally calls for the development of enhanced capabilities to provide UCB units for transplantation. Funding provided under these contracts allows for the continued recruitment and support of adult donors as well as the collection, processing and storage of UCB units. The contracts further specify requirements for the identification and delivery of HC grafts, support of patients and the collection of comprehensive donor and recipient outcome data.In fulfillment of its mission and the government mandates, the NMDP functions as a network of participating organizations that perform the various functions involved in facilitating unrelated donor HC transplantation (HCT). The organizations include donor centers, which currently number 73 and are involved in the recruitment and subsequent management of adult volunteer donors. Donor centers are assisted in their recruitment efforts by 10 recruitment groups, which focus upon targeted recruitment within the US racial and ethnic minority populations. When an adult donor is matched with a recipient and a transplant occurs, the donor will donate either BM or PBSC, depending upon the wishes of the transplant physician. PBSC have been collected since 1999 and currently comprise nearly 70% of adult donor donations. BM collections occur at collection centers, which currently number 97, while PBSC collections occur at apheresis centers, which number 89. Twenty-four CB banks, which collect, store and manage UCB units, are currently participating with the NMDP. Transplant ce...

How I treat: the selection and acquisition of unrelated cord blood grafts

“…Both the number of CB transplantations 1 and the global inventory of CB units (estimated at 400 000) 2 are growing rapidly. Therefore, it is critically important that transplantation centers (TCs) have a thorough understanding of how to perform a CB search as well as the challenges encountered in the selection and acquisition of CB grafts.…”

Quantitative and qualitative differences in use and trends of hematopoietic stem cell transplantation: a Global Observational Study

“…Competent authorities will have to balance the advantages and costs of establishing and maintaining a national donor registry with its own local HLA-haplotype distribution with alternative strategies. 24,29,30 The even representation of unrelated HSCT in high income countries documents the functioning worldwide exchange of graft material.…”

Advent and Maturation of Regenerative Medicine

“…Today more than 400,000 cord blood grafts are available in more than 50 CBBs (http://www.bmdw.org and http:// www.wmda.org). This development is due to the organization of international registries for outcome data collection such as the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP; http://www.nmdp.org) [37]; the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR; http://www.cibmtr.org); and other CBB networks, including Netcord (http://www.netcord.org) and Eurocord (http://www.eurocord .org), which is an international registry operating on behalf of the European Blood and Marrow Transplant (EBMT) group and includes European and non-European centers.…”

“…The NMDP contains typing information on more than 4 million potential donors and can search international registries as well. Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide (BMDW) is a collective database of 59 registries in 43 countries and 37 cord blood registries from 21 countries; 11,386,999 potential donors and cord units were available as of July 2007 [37][38][39][40].…”