 Evidence no. 5 cord blood banking and transplant. Cord blood - which was once disposed as a hospital waste - is currently a precious source of hemopoietic stem cells to be used for bone marrow replacement in patients affected by severe blood diseases. The last 25 years of clinical experience with this stem cell source has shown that high cell dose and better HLA match are the most important factors impacting on patient survival. For this reason, cord blood banks preferentially cryopreserve cord blood units with very large volumes, as volume correlates with cell content, and discard about three quarters of units collected. It is expected that the discard rate will increase in the future, also because the worldwide inventory of about 600.000 cord blood units in 128 cord blood banks already includes units with volumes that are currently considered sub-optimal for hemopoietic transplant. It is therefore expected that 70-80 of cord blood units donated for allogeneic hemopoietic transplant may be unsuitable for this use and ultimately discarded. These units can be used for the preparation of platelet gel if a suitable program of recovery from delivery suites, transportation to a production site and processing into platelet gel is developed. 