Safety and Feasibility of Sulforaphane to Promote Early Haematopoietic Recovery After Cord Blood Transplantation

Umbilical cord blood (UCB) is rich in haematopoietic stem progenitor cells and immune cells, and is used for transplantation for a variety of haematological disorders with the advantages of low mating requirements and fewer transplant complications. By March 2025 China's seven (eight) public cord blood stem cell banks had frozen more than 280,000 public umbilical cord blood, while the percentage of those frozen for ≥10 years was 26%, making clinical application a concern. The previous study showed that long-term freezing impairs cellular mitochondrial function leading to decreased reconstruction of cord blood haematopoietic stem progenitor cells and impaired differentiation into the megakaryotic lineage, and that intervention with the antioxidant radicicol thiols (SFN) can partially rescue the cellular functional damage caused by freezing. The findings were based on immunodeficient animals, and clinical studies are urgently needed to determine whether SFN intervention can promote post-transplant haematopoietic reconstitution in patients with long term cryopreserved (≥10 years) UCB. In this project, the investigators propose to conduct a single-arm, open, single-centre phase I-II clinical study on the safety and feasibility of dietary supplement SFN to promote early haematopoietic restoration after cord blood transplantation to evaluate the safety and feasibility of the use of long-frozen UCB for peri-infusion SFN use in adult transplant recipients, and to reveal the effect of peri-infusion SFN use on neutrophil implantation. This project will provide scientific guidance to promote the clinical application of long-term cryopreserved UCB, as well as key data to optimise the clinical transplantation strategy of UCB and expand its application.