You are here

Home » News » Update on Pediatric Cord Blood Transplants in China
Advertising

Update on Pediatric Cord Blood Transplants in China

June 2026

 

A recent publication summarizes pediatric stem cell transplants (HSCT) in the Chinese registry CCBMTR for the years 2017 to 2024. Additional information is published in supplements.

Key take aways:

  • China is currently performing 4000+ pediatric HSCT/year.
  • 80% of pediatric HSCT in China take place in 51 dedicated pediatric HSCT centers.
  • The four top indications for HSCT include Aplastic Anemia (AA) and Thalassemia Major (TM); diagnoses which are more common in China than in the Western hemisphere.
  • The majority, 89%, of pediatric HSCT in China use peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) as the primary graft source. This differs from the registries CIBMT in the USA and EBMT in the EU, where transplants with bone marrow (BM) are more common than PBSC among children.
  • Overall, 10% of pediatric transplants in China are performed with cord blood (CB), but this varies by diagnosis between 1% (for AA and TM) and 47% (for inherited metabolic disorders).
  • The total cord blood utilization for pediatric transplants in China is higher than 10%, because two thirds of Haploidentical PBSC transplants include a second graft: BM, CB, or MSC. However, the publication supplements do not reveal the breakdown by type of second graft.
  • Example: For TM there were 3687 pediatric HSCT from 2017-2024, 95% used PBSC as primary graft, and 23% of those PBSC transplants had a second graft (supplement 3).
  • Example: For AA there were 4077 pediatric HSCT from 2017-2024, 94% used PBSC as primary graft, and 47% of those PBSC transplants had a second graft (supplement 3).
  • Historically, the fraction of pediatric HSCT with cord blood in China has dropped from 31% during 1998-2012 to a stable 10% over the eight years 2017-2024 (supplement 4). But during 2017-2024, the number of pediatric HSCT centers has doubled, and the number of transplants per year has increased from about 1500 to 4000+. Thus, the usage of cord blood has not dropped in absolute numbers, even though it is now a smaller share of the market.

 

Figure 1d of Luo C, Sun R, Yu U. et al. High proportion of peripheral blood and haploidentical stem cell transplantation in Chinese children: a nationwide CCBMTR analysis. Bone Marrow Transplant. 2026; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-026-02897-y