National Marrow Donor Program

The National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is a non-profit organization dedicated to establishing, maintaining, and improving a system that provides transplants of bone marrow and other hematopoietic cells from volunteer, unrelated donors for individuals with leukemia and other life-threatening blood diseases. Established in 1988, NMDP maintains a registry of almost 3 million volunteer marrow donors; its network consists of a few hundred donor centers, collection centers and transplant centers, and several recruitment centers. There is a special need for volunteer marrow donors from the African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and American Indian/Alaskan Native communities. To address this need, NMDP is currently conducting four specially targeted national recruitment campaigns to increase registry representation of minority volunteers. NMDP maintains a database on unrelated transplant outcomes for research, as well as an office of patient advocacy to assist affected individuals and their families regarding medical and financial concerns. The Related Donor Cord Blood Program, launched in October 2008, is administered by the NMDP, and overseen by the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). This program offers families impacted by life-threatening diseases the opportunity to have the umbilical cord blood of a new baby collected and stored at no cost to them. The cord blood then may be used to treat an affected biological sibling or parent who has a diagnosed disease such as leukemia, lymphoma, a sickle-cell disorder, an immune deficiency or a metabolic disease.