This is done to reconstitute a patient's blood and immune system, following treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy, which destroys blood cells.

The stem cells are infused directly into the patient's blood stream, which migrate to the bone marrow. Inside the bone marrow environment, the stem cells begin differentiating into the three blood cell types - red blood, white blood and platelets. This initiates the regeneration of the patient's blood and immune system.

The first umbilical cord blood transplant was performed in 1988 in France, which successfully treated a 5-year old boy with Fanconi's Anaemia. To date there have been more than 10,000 umbilical cord blood stem cell transplants reported worldwide