Assessing the HLA diversity of cord blood units collected from a birth clinic caring for pregnant women in an ethnically diverse metropolitan area.

Background: New strategies are emerging in cord blood banking where focusing on birth clinics caring for a high number of mothers belonging to ethnic minorities could offer new possibilities for allotransplantation both for patients of European origin and for patients from ethnic minorities or mixed ancestries.

Study Design And Methods: Marseilles Cord Blood Bank works with one university birth clinic caring for a culturally and sociologically diverse population. Stringent French legal restrictions apply to recording the geographic origin of parents.