Recently Bulgarian Bone Marrow Donors Registry (BBMDR) has been established and since August 2005 it has been a member of Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide. Currently the number of healthy donors included in the BBMDR is relatively low. All donors included in the BBMDR are typed for HLA-A, -B, -DRB loci. Phylogenetic analysis based on HLA allele frequencies shows that Bulgarians were characterized with closest genetic similarity to Macedonians, Greeks, Romanians, Cretans and Sardinians in comparison to the other European and Mediterranean populations. On the contrary the second largest ethnic minority-the Roma were the closest to the other Roma populations and North Indians. These differences were due to the predominance of alleles and haplotypes that are specific for the Asian and the other Roma populations. These specific genetic profiles in the Bulgarian ethnic minorities justify the need of an adequate representation of minorities in BBMDR. Future directions for BBMDR development are discussed, including an increase of the total number of donors and these for ethnic minorities, as well the enhancement of the level of resolution of the HLA typing for the donors in the registry.

The allogenic transplantation of hemopoietic stem cell from bone marrow and peripheral blood is limited due to the necessity to identify HLA matched donor within the family or in bone marrow donor registries. Although, more than 10 million donors are available worldwide, completely HLA matched donors could be found only for 75% of the patients. It is well known that transplantations of hematopoietic stem cell from cord blood are characterized with a lower risk of GvHD and therefore do not require so strict criteria for HLA matching, and less time for search of matched donor is needed. The necessity to establish a National cord blood bank in Bulgaria is emphasized further by the heterogeneity of HLA allele and haplotype distribution in the Bulgarian population. That could be explained by the ethnic diversity of the population. As a result some alleles are more frequent in Bulgarians compared to other populations. The organization, accreditation, and development of a strategy for a National cord blood bank will be discussed.

Smoking as a cause of cancer development has been the subject of research by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) [1, 2]. The highest rates are for lung (up to 90% of cases), oral cavity (92%) and larynx (87%) cases [3]. Smoking is one of the most important causes in the etiology of lung cancer [3, 4]. The purpose of the study was to determine whether smoking had an effect on the morphological type of lung cancer. One hundred and fifty patients with histologically proven lung cancer by gender, age, smoking experience, and morphology of lung cancer were studied. The number of men is twice that of women; the highest number of patients is between 40 and 60 years of age. 76.6% of patients are active smokers, 88.6% of them have used cigarettes for more than 10 years, and 59% have smoked more than 20 cigarettes daily. Of the nonsmoking patients, 48.6% are passive smokers. The distribution by morphological type of lung cancer in smokers indicates that the ratio of squamous type of cancer (59%) is the highest, followed by adenocarcinoma (29.5%), and small cellular cancer (11.3%).