A Multicenter Study of Unrelated Umbilical Cord Blood as an Alternate Source of Stem Cells for Transplantation

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the efficacy of umbilical cord blood transplantation, as measured by durable neutrophil engraftment, in patients with malignant or nonmalignant hematological disease.
• Determine the disease-free survival and long-term survival in patients treated with this regimen.
• Determine the incidence of neutrophil engraftment, primary and secondary graft failure, platelet engraftment, and RBC engraftment in patients treated with this regimen.
• Determine the incidence and severity of acute and chronic graft-versus-host disease, complications (infection, veno-occlusive disease, interstitial pneumonitis), relapse, other malignancies, lymphoproliferative disorders, and posttransplantation myelodysplasia in patients treated with this regimen.
• Determine the immune reconstitution in patients treated with this regimen.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to disease group (malignant vs nonmalignant). Patients with malignant disease are further stratified according to quality of HLA match (1 or 2/6 vs 3/6 vs 4/6 vs 5/6 or 6/6), cell dose, and age.

Patients are assigned to one of three conditioning regimens, depending on disease.

• Group A (malignant disease ): Patients undergo total body irradiation (TBI) once on day -8 and twice daily on days -7 to -4. Male patients with acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) undergo radiotherapy boost to testes. Patients receive cyclophosphamide (CTX) IV on days -3 and -2 and methylprednisolone (MePRDL) IV and anti-thymocyte globulin (ATG) IV on days -3 to -1.
• Group B (inborn errors of metabolism/storage disease): Patients receive oral busulfan (BU) every 6 hours on days -6 and -5, CTX IV on days -4 and -3, and MePRDL IV and ATG IV every 12 hours on days -2 and -1.
• Group C (other nonmalignant diseases): Patients receive oral BU every 6 hours on days -9 to -6, CTX IV on days -5 to -2, and MePRDL IV and ATG IV on days -3 to -1.