China has built the world's largest Chinese bone marrow databank covering 500,000 donors.

"Our target is to collect data on one million donors by the end of 2010 so as to help more patients find compatible marrow data," an official with the China Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) said.

The program, launched in 2001 by the Red Cross Society of China, aims to help millions of Chinese with blood diseases.
Five hundred of the listed donors have volunteered to give hematopoietic stem cells to the CMDP for transplant after human leucocyte antigens (HLA) matching, the CMDP said.

The establishment of the CMDP is also helping overseas Chinese. In 2005, the databank helped two patients in the United States, one in Singapore and one in Hong Kong find compatible hematopoietic stem cells.

Stem cell transplants have proved effective in treating blood diseases like sickle-cell anemia, leukemia and other disorders. Matching of donor and recipient for human leucocyte antigens is pivotal for the success of blood stem cell transplants.

Different races and nationalities differ in HLA. Experts believe that as China has 56 nationalities and a population of 1.3billion, the CMDP is of great value not only to China, but also to Asia and the world. So far, the CMDP has set up 30 provincial branch marrow banks, collecting data on the wide basis of locality, race and nationality.

Experts said matching bone marrow is very difficult among people with no blood relationship so the more data the marrow bank has, the more lives it can save. "With 500,000 donor data, the CMDP could basically meet the clinical demands of stem cells transplants in China," the CMDP said.

China has more than four million leukemia sufferers with almost one million waiting for matching hematopoietic stem cells.

( Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2006)