Stem Cell Transplants

Stem cell transplants are a supportive treatment adjacent to chemotherapy, since anti-cancer drugs usually destroy the blood-formating cells in the bone marrow. Stem cell transplantation seems to be the right support for chemotherapy, and so far, thousands of people have benefited from the regenerative advantages of such transplant therapy. Before any transplant, one needs to find a suitable donor, or in the absence of compatibility, the patient’s bone marrow cells will be collected and stored prior to the beginning of chemotherapy. After collection, they will be frozen and stored until the intervention.

Injection is the only way of sending stem cell transplants into the bloodstream and they thus reach the bone marrow where they start producing blood cells. Normally, more than one transplant sessions are necessary, as the treatment cycles ought to follow the chemotherapy periodicity. How can stem cells contribute to blood formation? Well, these remarkable biological cellular formations can generate all the blood components, from the red cells to the white cells and platelets. The red cells transport the oxygen through the body, the white cells protect the system against bacteria acting as body shields and the platelets control blood clotting and bleeding.

The blood and bone marrow naturally contain stem cells, but under the influence of chemotherapy drugs, they get destroyed without the possibility to regenerate without help. The stem cell transplants thus become the way to restoring the blood cells production that would otherwise stop by lack of undifferentiated cells. Not all the cancer patients require stem cell transplants. In fact, several factors indicate whether the treatment is suitable for the patient or not, and here we can count the stage of the disease, its intensity, the patient’s responsiveness to the treatment and the overall physical condition.

In the past, only younger patients were chosen for stem cell transplants, but at present, age is no longer such a relevant criterion. What does indeed matter is the health of the internal organs such as kidneys, heart and lungs as well as the performance status in the cancer therapy. There are several types of stem cell transplants but only a few of them have reached a notorious status. And these include bone marrow transplants, peripheral stem cell blood transplants or cord blood transplants. There are other more scientific ways of separating stem cell transplants into further categories but they usually serve more for research purposes.

Filed Under: Stem Cells