Mumbai, January 18: Currently, donor blood and bone marrow transplantation are the main treatments available for leukemia; however the latest advancement in stem cell therapy throws hope for treatment and survival.
 
The new technique when applied multiplies the small number of stem cells in the donor’s blood, making it more potent for treatment of blood cancer or leukemia. The treatment eliminates the need for a matching donor whose bone marrow can be transplanted to the patient, because of the risk of rejection of new cells by the patient’s body; so what this treatment does is introduces cells extracted from the umbilical cord where the chance of immune rejection is low, and this way it helps to keep the problem of finding the right donor at bay.
 
According to scientist Dr Colleen Delaney and her colleagues, the concentration of stem cells can be increased from 200,000 per kilogram to six million.
 
So when transplanted to the patient,  these cells can rapidly give rise to white blood cells and other components of the blood system.
 
Leukemia is a cancer of the white blood cells and bone marrow.
 
The disadvantage in this treatment is the relatively small number of stem cells in cord blood, about one-10th the number a patient receives from a conventional transplant.

So the longer the engraftment takes, the higher the risk is that patients with damaged immune systems will acquire life-threatening infections because they have essentially no white blood cells to fight them.
 
Seven of the 10 patients who participated in the trial are alive and healthy, with no evidence of recurrence of leukemia.

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TAGS: Leukemia, stem cell therapy