By Brielle Benyon – Cure Today
Cryopreserved stem cells led to a higher rate of relapse in patients with blood cancer, though there was no difference in survival, research showed.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Marrow Donor Program declared that cell grafts for hematopoietic stem cell transplantation must be frozen via a process called cryopreservation. However, recent research showed that patients with blood cancer who received these cryopreserved cells tended to have a higher rate of relapse than those who received fresh cells.