Unrelated umbilical cord blood units for 54 cases in 21 transplant centers were provided by Guangzhou Cord Blood Bank in China from 1998 to 2003. This study was aimed to identify HLA-DRB1 alleles by means of PCR sequencing based typing methods (SBT) and to analyze the correlation between HLA-DRB1 alleles and GVHD in unrelated umbilical cord blood transplantation (UCBT). 48 out of 54 patients received UCBT were followed up. DNA were extracted from cryopreservation blood of recipients/donors with UCBT, HLA-DRB1 alleles typing were done by SBT. Compared with low resolution results of HLA-DRB1 alleles, high resolution results were analyzed to see any correlation between HLA-DRB1 alleles and GVHD. by double-blind statistically analysis of HLA-DRB1 high resolution in 48 donor/recipient typings in UCBT. The results showed that the incidence of GVHD (25%) in patients who has HLA-DRB1 alleles matched with donors significantly lower (65.6%) than that in the patients with HLA-DRB1 alleles mismatched (P = 0.008). It is concluded that HLA-DRB1 by high resolution typing method is important in clinical application in UCBT.