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Bone Marrow Transplant (4) <THIS PAGE NEEDS TO BE
UP-DATED> Here at Children's Hospital in Oakland we have
9 children who have received bone marrow transplants for beta thalassemia
major. There are 6 children who have had complete engraftment, 3 children
who are mixed chimeras and one child who had failure of engraftment. There
has been no mortality. Children's Hospital is currently in the early stages
of developing a umbilical cord-blood bank. Blood donated from the placenta
of the new born infant contains large numbers of stem cells that can be
used for bone marrow transplantation. Early research indicates that these
young stem cells are more likely to engraft in a recipient and do not
necessarily have to be HLA-identical. Research is currently under way
to increase the numbers of stem cells in cord blood after it is collected.
In addition, perpherial blood contains stem cells; using pheresis techniques,
these cells can be sorted and collected for transplantation. The same
research which may lead to increasing the numbers of stem cells in cord
blood can be used on perpherial blood stem cells. This is the hope for
the future of transplantation. |
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