Thousands of people die each year due to the lack of a suitable match or donor resource for bone marrow transplants.
"thousands of people die every year because they do not have a proper resource for their bone marrow transplant or whatever they need. Thousands of them, all right?" (said at 0:50:21)
Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a potentially curative therapy for life-threatening hematologic malignancies and non-malignant disorders. While thousands of patients worldwide historically faced fatal delays or disease progression due to the lack of a suitable fully matched human leukocyte antigen (HLA) donor—with severe racial disparities where optimal unrelated adult donor match likelihoods drop as low as 16% for certain ethnic groups—the donor landscape has evolved substantially. The expansion of volunteer registries (e.g., the National Marrow Donor Program/NMDP), umbilical cord blood banks, and the widespread adoption of haploidentical (half-matched) family donors with post-transplant cyclophosphamide means that nearly all patients now have an identifiable donor source. Nonetheless, significant numbers of patients still succumb to disease due to delays in finding compatible donors, lack of optimal matches among diverse ancestries, and healthcare access barriers.
- context: HLA match likelihoods for hematopoietic stem-cell grafts in the U.S. registry. (The New England journal of medicine 2014)
"Our models indicated that most candidates for HSCT will have a suitable (HLA-matched or minimally mismatched) adult donor. However, many patients will not have an optimal adult donor--that is, a donor who is matched at high resolution at HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C, and HLA-DRB1. The likelihood of finding an optimal donor varies among racial and ethnic groups, with the highest probability among whites of European descent, at 75%, and the lowest probability among blacks of South or Central American descent, at 16%." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi) - supports: Breaking Access Barriers to Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation and Chimeric Antigen Rece… (Transplantation and cellular therapy 2026)
"Additionally, delays and lack of referral from physicians to cellular therapy specialists add to the problem, risking relapse and missed opportunity for these treatments. Addressing these barriers with a sense of urgency, especially in the era of expanding cell therapy indications, could save many patients from succumbing to disease." (abstract, results, passage verified)
pubmedfull study (doi)