HHS, NIH Launch Online Database on Blood And Marrow Stem Cell Transplants

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), have recently launched the first public database of results from clinical blood and marrow stem cell transplants involving unrelated donors. Accessible at http://www.ncbi.nih.gov/mhc, this centralized resource provides genetic as well as age, gender and ethnicity data on more than 1,300 transplant donors and recipients from around the world.

With the availability of this new database, researchers can generate and test hypotheses on the role of donor matching in blood and marrow stem cell transplants. The database also provides survival rates of people who received cell grafts, helping doctors and their patients evaluate the potential risks and benefits of transplantation in treating disorders such as leukemia.

It is expected that the database will help physicians predict outcomes of blood and marrow stem cell transplants and tailor therapies to specific patients.

The database is is part of a long-range plan at NIAID to develop and disseminate genetic tools that provide greater predictive value for donor matching than current methods.

To ensure patient and donor privacy, none of the clinical information in the database contains personal identifiers such as birth dates. The available data include patient and donor MHC types, ethnicity, age and gender as well as the description of the transplant, the disease diagnosis and the number of days the recipient survived after the transplant.

This transplant database is part of a broader MHC database maintained by NCBI, and part of a larger effort supported by NIAID. The MHC database presents information from the International Histocompatibility Working Group in Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation, an effort spearheaded by NIAID with additional support from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation; other NIH components, including the National Cancer Institute, the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Press releases, fact sheets and other NIAID-related materials are available on the NIAID Web site at www.niaid.nih.gov.