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.

The stem cell transplants are injected into the patient’s 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 the three types of blood cells such as the red blood cells, the white blood cells and the platelets. The red cells transport the oxygen to all the body parts, the white cells protect the system against bacteria acting as body shields and the platelets regulate bleeding rate and blood clotting.

Although stem cell transplants seem like a separate therapy, it is worth mentioning the fact that the blood and the bone marrow normally contain stem cells, but these get destroyed in cancer patients because of chemotherapy. The stem cell transplants thus become the way to restoring the production of blood cells that would otherwise stop in the absence of the 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 the clearest examples are the patient’s responsiveness to the treatment, the health condition, the stage of the disease and so on.

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 kinds of stem cell transplants but only a few of them have reached a notorious status. And cord blood transplants, peripheral stem cell blood transplants or bone marrow transplants make the most relevant examples. 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