WASHINGTON, D.C. -- January 22, 2007 A cooperative agreement between the National Marrow Donor Program^® (NMDP) and the Chinese Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) has been approved by the governments of both nations, allowing patients in the United States and China greater access to potential marrow donors in both countries.

“The NMDP and the CMDP share the same mission ¯ to help save lives. Together we can help patients in the U.S., China and worldwide find the best possible match for their transplant,” said Jeffrey W. Chell, M.D., NMDP chief executive officer.

International donation plays a significant role in helping patients with leukemia or other blood disorders find matching donors. Approximately 40 percent of transplants facilitated by the NMDP involve either a U.S. patient receiving cells from an international donor or an international patient receiving cells from a U.S. donor.

NMDP actively works to increase access to the most racially and ethnically diverse pool of donors and cord blood units through focused recruitment to its Registry and through international partnerships, like the one with CMDP. A diverse pool of volunteer donors is vital, as the close match of tissue types required for a transplant is most likely found between patients and donors who share the same racial or ethnic background.

“We are proud to add the Chinese Marrow Donor Program to our growing list of relationships with registries in more than 20 countries that are dedicated to expanding access to registries across the globe,” said Chell.

Established in 2001, the CMDP, a division of the Red Cross Society of China, maintains a registry of more than 500,000 adult marrow donors and is the only marrow registry in mainland China. Negotiations for the cooperative agreement began in 2005. The agreement focuses on increasing patients’ access to donors and includes visits by both organizations to each other’s headquarters to share information about the operations of their registries.

“We look forward to working with the NMDP to identify further ways in which we can partner to improve access to transplant care in China and the United States,” said Junling Hong, director of the Chinese Marrow Donor Program.

NMDP cooperative registry agreements provide patients and their physicians with a single point of access to more than 10 million donors. More than 6 million of these donors are listed on the NMDP Registry. The additional 4 million are available through these cooperative registries and the Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide database. The NMDP also provides access to more than 50,000 cord blood units.

In addition to China, the NMDP has cooperative registry agreements with donor registries in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Republic of Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.