A Twist on Stem Cell Transplants Could Help Blood Cancer Patients

February 11, 2022

(Wired) – But Doyle’s oncologist asked her to consider a new option. Since 2009, Shlomchik had been running a clinical trial of a different way to do stem cell grafts for people with blood cancers like AML, hoping it can lower the risk of chronic GVHD. The treatment involves carefully filtering out a subset of the donor’s immune cells suspected of triggering it. Doyle became one of 138 participants. Like the others, she received the filtered grafts—in her case, involving stem cells donated by her brother—after chemotherapy. Oncologists monitored each person’s condition for three or four years. And in results published in January in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the team writes that their experimental treatment greatly diminished the incidence of chronic GVHD. Typical rates are between 30 and 60 percent. In the study, it dropped to roughly 7 percent. (Read More)