Past and future of providing matched, unrelated donors for marrow transplantation

Prior to 1979, bone marrow transplants were only performed with histocompatible sibling donors. Once it was established that histocompatible, unrelated donors could donate marrow for transplantation, the recruitment of such donors needed to be standardized. Blood donor centers had already identified the histocompatibility locus antigen (HLA) typing for donors who could be recruited to donate bone marrow. Recruiting a large number of donors required systematic evaluation and testing according to defined standards which were published in 1988 by the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). Peripheral stem cell collection (PBS) has been added as a transplant source. It promises additional therapeutic modalities, such as gene splicing to address other than cancer therapy.