Amazing but needing a bone marrow transplant from the same person who donated the organ makes this unlikely to become the norm. Its only stem cells they need so maybe if we can improve the stem cell reversion thing.
I find the process amazing, more so if it can be cascaded across many donors.
It could do… apparently live donors are about 30% of transplants now. In those cases it’s not a huge extra step to get some bone marrow.
I heard bone marrow is really aweful and requires a lot of recovery but maybe that is just the recieving end or something.
That was back in the day when it had to be extracted from inside the thigh bone. When I donated 10 years ago, it was a few injections upfront to increase your natural stem cell count in the blood, followed by a 4 hr at a clinic to extract them using a dialysis machine. The narrative about bone marrow being painful needs to die. It might be de motivating potential donors.
oh thats wonderful. Yeah I think I have holdovers from when the procedure first came out.
It’s called periphery blood stem cell donation apparently. Was curious and went looking. Linked in case you’re curious too.
There is another method that that isn’t really applicable here, which comes from donated umbilical cords and placentas that would otherwise be thrown away.
you know I did a search and saw those but was not sure it applied since the article specifically said bone marrow which made me think the other stem cells would not suffice.
That may just be the reporter simplifying to match the newspaper’s target audience.
There are different types of stem cell, true. My guess is that they’re talking about hematopoietic stem cells (hence bone marrow), and those are also found in the blood stream and collectible through periphery donation. The first link actually talks about PBSC donation in terms of bone marrow transplants in the opening paragraph.
We’ll find out for sure when they publish the journal next week :)
Any haematologists / immunologoists here? Does she run the risk of GVHD after this?
