India's first public cord blood repository - looking back and moving forward.

Umbilical cord blood is an established source of stem cells useful for hematopoetic reconstitution. The first clinical transplantation in France by Eliane Gluckman in 1988 using HLA matched umbilical cord blood from a sibling on a 6-year-old boy with Fanconi's anemia is an example of a successful transplantation. So far, more than 8,000 patients worldwide have been treated for malignant and inherent blood disorders [1, 2].