The Chinese Marrow Donor Program (CMDP) signed an agreement on Monday with its Japanese counterpart to cooperate in hematopoietic stem cell transplant.

Under the agreement, the two marrow banks will seek cell donors for leukemia patients by sharing marrow reserves information.

With 670,000 donors in China and 280,000 in Japan, the cooperation would dramatically increase the match rate of hematopoietic stem cells for patients with leukemia, said Hong Junling, director of CMDP.

China had more than one million leukemia patients with around 40,000 new cases every year, said Hong.

"More than 2,000 leukemia patients in Japan are also waiting for donors of hematopoietic stem cells," said Tohru Masaoka, adviser of Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases in Japan.

"We expect great cooperation between the two sides in saving people's lives," Tohru Masaoka said.

Hong said the cooperation was possible because the people of the two nations were "ethnically similar".

The two sides also agreed to recruit donors, conduct collection of hematopoietic stem cells according to their respective standards and procedures and maintain donor confidentiality.

CMDP, also known as the Data Bank of Chinese Hematopoietic Stem Cell Donors, was established in 1992. It has signed agreements with the U.S., South Korea and Singapore in marrow information sharing and has donated 11 sets of stem cells to patients of those nations.

(Xinhua News Agencey September 25, 2007)