Injections of stem cells save children with graft-versus-host disease after bone marrow transplant

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Stem cell shots rescue terminally ill children

a.. 06 January 2008

b.. From New Scientist Print Edition.

c.. Andy Coghlan

Children who had seemed doomed to die within weeks may have been rescued by

injections of stem cells originally extracted from healthy bone marrow donors.

The children all had graft-versus-host disease, a condition in which bone marrow

transplants aimed at treating diseases such as leukaemia end up attacking the

child instead. Between 30 and 60 per cent of children receiving such transplants

develop the condition. While the majority of cases are mild and can be resolved

with immunosuppressive drugs, a minority of patients do not respond to treatment

and die within three months from liver failure, diarrhoea and bleeding in the

gut.

Osiris Therapeutics of Columbia, land, teamed up with Vinod Prasad at Duke

University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, to offer injections of

mesenchymal stem cells, isolated from the bone marrow of healthy donors, to 12

children aged four months to 15 years who had not responded to conventional

treatment.

Lab experiments had previously shown that the white blood cells that cause the

inflammation associated with graft-versus-host disease could be pacified when

exposed to the mesenchymal cells. The tests had also demonstrated that

recipients' immune cells do not recognise the cells as foreign and so do not

reject them (New Scientist, 15 December 2001, p 4).

Of the 12 children who received the stem cell injections, five are still alive

eight months on, while the deaths of the other seven were from infections or

organ failure not related to graft-versus-host disease. Prior to the deaths, the

graft-versus-host disease had been completely resolved in seven of the children

(of whom two died), while inflammation had eased in the other five. Osiris is

now engaged in a much larger trial to see if the results can be repeated.

Full story

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19726370.300 & print=true