China has built the world's largest Chinese bone marrow databank
covering 500,000 donors.
"Our target is to collect data on one million donors by the end
of 2010 so as to help more patients find compatible marrow data,"
an official with the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) said.
The program, launched in 2001 by the Red Cross Society of China,
aims to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.
Five hundred of the listed donors have volunteered to give
hematopoietic stem cells to the CMDP for transplant after human
leucocyte antigens (HLA) matching, the CMDP said.
The establishment of the CMDP is also helping overseas Chinese.
In 2005, the databank helped two patients in the United States, one
in Singapore and one in Hong Kong find compatible hematopoietic
stem cells.
Stem cell transplants have proved effective in treating blood
diseases like sickle-cell anemia, leukemia and other disorders.
Matching of donor and recipient for human leucocyte antigens is
pivotal for the success of blood stem cell transplants.
Different races and nationalities differ in HLA. Experts believe
that as China has 56 nationalities and a population of 1.3billion,
the CMDP is of great value not only to China, but also to Asia and
the world. So far, the CMDP has set up 30 provincial branch marrow
banks, collecting data on the wide basis of locality, race and
nationality.
Experts said matching bone marrow is very difficult among people
with no blood relationship so the more data the marrow bank has,
the more lives it can save. "With 500,000 donor data, the CMDP
could basically meet the clinical demands of stem cells transplants
in China," the CMDP said.
China has more than four million leukemia sufferers with almost
one million waiting for matching hematopoietic stem cells.
( Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2006)