Stem Cell Transplants

Bone Marrow Replacement

Replacement of abnormal red bone marrow with healthy red bone marrow to restore normal blood cell counts.

Bone Marrow Replacement: Process

A procedure in which healthy bone marrow is collected from a donor’s iliac crest (hip bone) to be later injected into a recipient’s vein to replace diseased marrow with healthy, multiplying stem cells.

Bone Marrow Replacement: Conditions Treated

Bone marrow transplants are used to treat disorders such as aplastic anemia, certain cancers and blood cancers, immune deficiencies, and inherited blood diseases like thalassemia and sickle-cell disease.

Bone Marrow Replacement: Drawbacks (WBCs)

Patients face severe infection risks after a bone marrow transplant because high-dose chemotherapy and radiation destroy WBCs, as it takes 2-3 weeks for the transplant to produce enough WBCs to fight the infection.

Bone Marrow Replacement: Drawbacks (Immune Response)

The transplanted bone marrow might produce T cells that attack the recipient’s tissues in failure to recognize the recipient as “self”

Bone Marrow Replacement: Drawbacks (Immunosuppressive Drugs)

These medications reduce immune-system activity after a bone marrow transplant, increasing infection risk and potentially causing fever, muscle aches, headache, nausea, fatigue, depression, high blood pressure, and kidney or liver damage.

Cord-Blood Transplant

A recent advanced procedure in which stem cells can be collected from the umbilical cord shortly after birth using a syringe and then frozen for later transplantation

Cord-Blood Transplant: Advantage

They are easy to collect with parental permission, more abundant, less likely to cause graft-versus-host disease or transmit infections, require a less exact donor match, and can be stored indefinitely in cord-blood banks.