Access to Bone Marrow Transplant Donors

Clinical Pearls

Miguel-Angel Perales, MD, deputy chief, Adult Bone Marrow Transplant Service, director, Adult Bone Marrow Transplantation Fellowship Program, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the challenges regarding access to bone marrow transplant donors.

• Most donors in the registry are of European descent, which decreases the likelihood of finding a donor for minority patients
• There are two fundamental approaches to overcome this donor shortage: expand the pool to include minorities and analyze what grafts can be provided to patients
• Studies presented at the 2013 ASH meeting looked at the question of donor and ancestry and recovery following cord grafts