Hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) or progenitor cell (HPC) donation can be provided by oneself or from another person. When a patient receives his own HSCs/HPCs, both the cells and transplant type are referred to as autologous.
When a patient receives cells from another person, the cells and transplant are referred to as allogeneic. Allogeneic donors may be unrelated volunteers or related to the patient. Allogeneic transplant requires matching tissue types (human leukocyte antigen- or HLA-type) between the patient and donor. These tissue types are inherited, but 70 percent of patients do not have a matched donor in their family. Therefore, it is often necessary to screen thousands or millions of HLA-types to find a suitable match.
NMDP (formerly Be The Match), maintains a database of more than nine million donors who have volunteered to donate HPCs. HPCs collected from a donor in the NMDP registry are shipped from collection sites to hospitals around the world.
Gift of Life is another public, not-for-profit registry that provides donors for patients in the United States and abroad.
Sources of cells for a bone marrow transplant include bone marrow, mobilized peripheral blood and umbilical cord blood.
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