Successful blood and marrow transplantation (BMT) requires the infusion of a sufficient number of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs), capable of both homing to the bone marrow and regenerating a full array of hematopoietic cell lineages with early and late repopulating ability in a timely fashion.
A major drawback of Umbilical Cord Blood (UCB) is the low stem cell dose available for transplantation, compared to mobilized peripheral blood (PB) or bone marrow. This low stem cell dose can compromise the chances of engraftment and contributes to delayed kinetics of neutrophil and platelet recovery, as well as other transplant outcomes.
The aim of ex vivo expansion of cord blood is to provide a graft with sufficient numbers of cells that have rapid and robust in vivo neutrophil and platelet producing potential to enable successful transplantation.
NiCord® is a stem/progenitor cell-based product composed of ex vivo expanded allogeneic cells from one entire unit of UCB. NiCord® utilizes the small molecule nicotinamide (NAM), as an epigenetic approach to inhibit differentiation and to increase the migration, bone marrow (BM) homing and engraftment efficiency of Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells (HPC) expanded in ex vivo cultures. The chief aim of the study is to compare the safety and efficacy of NiCord® single ex-vivo expanded cord blood unit transplantation to unmanipulated cord blood unit transplantation in patients with hematological malignancies following conditioning therapy.
