Karen Ballen – författare

The purpose of the book is to focus attention and offer suggestions on controversial and challenging topics in allogeneic stem cell transplant. Over 40,000 allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplants (HCT) are done worldwide each year. Despite advances in allogeneic transplant, the cure rate is only 50-70%, depending on disease and patient factors. The book focuses on key topics such as patient selection, donor selection, conditioning regimens, graft vs. host disease prophylaxis regimens, maintenance strategies, and other topics that affect patient outcomes. The authors also discuss access to transplant care. Through dissemination of these topics, we hope to educate health care professionals caring for these patients, and improve patient outcomes. This is an essential resource for transplant physicians, hematologists/oncologists, and advance practice providers. Several of the topics are controversial issues that are discussed “round the table” frequently by transplant teams.

This comprehensive volume discusses the current scope of umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT), including recent controversies and future developments for improving clinical outcomes. Its twenty chapters introduce new applications in regenerative medicine and discuss the latest scientific, regulatory, clinical and investigational aspects of cord blood banking. Physicians from around the world provide a global collaboration which explores strategies for umbilical cord blood expansion, homing, unit selection, and combining of graft sources to improve patient outcomes. Umbilical Cord Blood Banking and Transplantation also reviews advances in pediatric UCBT for hematologic and non-hematologic disorders as well as immune recovery, which is critical to preventing infection. Finally, it compares UCBT with other graft sources in an attempt to understand the optimal graft source for the individual patient.  

UCBT is an important option for many patients who need a transplant but do not have a family donor or a matched unrelated donor. The collective and timely  knowledge presented here is essential reading for any regenerative medicine investigator, cord blood banker, transplant laboratory scientist or clinical physician interested in improving and expanding the applications of umbilical cord blood.