Category Archives: Stem Cell Transplant

By Partnership for Public Service August 5 at 9:54 AM Dr. Griffin Rodgers spends most of his waking hours leading the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), but he also manages to carve out time to work on a life-long passion discovering a cure for sickle cell disease. Long before becoming the director of NIDDK, Rodgers was credited with discovering the first effective therapy for sickle cell disease, an inherited blood disorder that affects more than 90,000 Americans, most of them African-Americans. The disease, which affects millions of people throughout the world, can damage bones, joints and internal organs, cause acute and chronic pain, and often result in premature death. Prior to his discovery of a drug treatment in the 1990s, the only options for sickle cell patients were blood transfusions for pain and supportive care. This initial breakthrough has been followed by the recent announcement that Rodgers and a team of National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers have developed a modified blood stem-cell transplant regimen that is highly effective in reversing sickle cell disease in adults. The findings, based on a clinical trial of 30 patients, represent a potentially transformative treatment. Dr. Neal Young, chief … Continue reading →

East Lancs brother hopes to raise cash at cricket match as thank-you to donor trust 4:20pm Tuesday 5th August 2014 in News By Katie Mercer, Reporter THE brother of an ex-Barnoldswick cricketer has organised a charity cricket tournament to raise money for the trust that has enabled his brother to have two stem cell transplants. Dave Scothern says that he and his wife, Andrea, decided that they wanted to say thank-you to the Antony Nolan Trust, a charity that finds suitable donors for people suffering from blood cancer. Daves brother, Ian Scothern, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma a type of bone marrow cancer eight years ago. The Anthony Nolan trust offered Ian a donor match and he underwent a stem cell transplant 2007. Dave said: They are a really fantastic charity and we just wanted to do something to help them. The trust says that at the moment, they are only finding donors for around half of the people who need them so we want to help them in their good work and find more. My brother did well after his first stem cell transplant but now hes in a position where he needs another one and the charity has … Continue reading →

James Shapiro: "Cutting Edge Islet and Stem Cell Transplant Therapies in the Clinic for Diabetes" A summary of recent progress and outcomes in clinical islet transplantation for the treatment of Diabetes will be provided, together with a discussion of approaches to stem cell transplantation... By: Talks at Google … Continue reading →

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patient's journey to a stem cell transplant Harley Hudson, a chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patient, decided to undergo a stem cell transplant after years of CLL treatment. Harley underwent chemoth... By: MD Anderson Cancer Center … Continue reading →

Hematopioetic Stem Cell Transplant Videos on Adult Stem Cell Transplant process as Marc Coppins goes through it. By: Marc Coppins … Continue reading →

By Sidhartha Banerjee, The Canadian Press Published Saturday, August 2, 2014 8:56AM EDT MONTREAL -- A Quebec woman's desperate online plea for a compatible stem-cell donor in her bid to fight cancer a second time is shedding light on the lack of minorities on official lists in Canada and abroad. Mai Duong finds herself battling leukemia again and doctors say they would like to proceed with a transplant of bone marrow or cord blood stem cells within a month. But Duong, 34, has discovered that locating the right person can be a needle-in-a-haystack challenge, particularly for those who are from a non-Caucasian background. "This is a global problem," Duong, who is of Vietnamese origin, said in an interview from her room at Montreal's Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. "We can't do a scavenger hunt every time someone has this type of problem." Duong, who returned home a few days after being interviewed, said a recent bone marrow biopsy showed no signs of cancer. She will now begin four weeks of maintenance chemotherapy, which is given in lower doses to assist in prolonging a remission. The mother of a four-year-old girl, Duong successfully fought off acute leukemia in 2013 with chemotherapy. She had to … Continue reading →

MONTREALA Quebec womans desperate online plea for a compatible stem-cell donor in her bid to fight cancer a second time is shedding light on the lack of minorities on official lists in Canada and abroad. Mai Duong finds herself battling leukemia again and doctors say they would like to proceed with a transplant of bone marrow or cord blood stem cells within a month. But Duong, 34, has discovered that locating the right person can be a needle-in-a-haystack challenge, particularly for those who are from a non-Caucasian background. This is a global problem, Duong, who is of Vietnamese origin, said in an interview from her room at Montreals Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. We cant do a scavenger hunt every time someone has this type of problem. Duong, who returned home a few days after being interviewed, said a recent bone marrow biopsy showed no signs of cancer. She will now begin four weeks of maintenance chemotherapy, which is given in lower doses to assist in prolonging a remission. The mother of a 4-year-old girl, Duong successfully fought off acute leukemia in 2013 with chemotherapy. She had to terminate a 15-week pregnancy to undergo the treatment. Duong was in remission until a blood … Continue reading →

Washington DC - infoZine - Approximately three-quarters of SCID infants who received transplants survived for at least five years. Infants who received transplants within the first 3.5 months of life had the best outcomes. SCID is caused by defects in genes involved in the development and function of infection-fighting T and B cells. Infants with SCID appear healthy at birth but are highly susceptible to infections. If untreated, SCID is fatal, usually within the first year of life. Development of a newborn screening test has made it possible to detect SCID before symptoms appear. The test was added to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Recommended Uniform Screening Panel for newborns in 2010, but to date, only 21 states have implemented newborn screening for SCID. "The findings from this study highlight the positive impact of treating SCID early in life," said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. "They also suggest that widespread use of newborn screening tests for SCID is warranted to ensure that infants with this rare syndrome receive life-saving transplants." Stem cell transplantation can fully correct the T-cell and, less consistently, the B-cell deficiencies of SCID infants. To identify factors that contribute to successful transplant outcomes, … Continue reading →

Kim Watkins was in Tennessee just starting a new career when she got a phone call that turned her life upside down and dimmed the bright future she thought her family would have. The phone call came in May and confirmed the familys worst fears. Doctors have found lesions on the brain of Glen and Kim Watkins 8-year-old son, Hayden. The lesions are a symptom of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) a rare disease that affects 1 in 20,000 boys. The lesions are eating away at Haydens brain and will cause irreversible brain damage, loss of the boys five senses and possibly death if not caught in time. Hayden has a 1 to 2-year window of opportunity to rectify the situation. It successfully takes a transplant to stop this or in two years he will be reduced to a vegetative state, Kim said. Haydens family had known this day could come since he was born. He had been getting annual MRIs done every October, but since the family was slated to move south, the MRI was bumped up by six months. It was during this recent scan that the lesions were first spotted. The family is on a waiting list to receive a … Continue reading →

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 31-Jul-2014 Contact: Courtney DeNicola Nowak denicolc@mskcc.org 212-639-3573 Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center Babies who are born with severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) can be successfully treated with a transplant of blood-forming stem cells, according to experts led by Memorial Sloan Kettering's Richard J. O'Reilly, MD, a world-renowned pioneer in the development of transplant protocols. Their review will be published in the July 30 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. SCID is a group of inherited disorders that cause the immune system to severely malfunction. When this breakdown occurs, babies no longer have the ability to fight off routine infections because their natural, built-in defense system has been damaged. If undiagnosed or left untreated, SCID is almost always fatal within the first year of life. A review of more than 240 patient cases found transplants to be quite effective, especially when performed early in life. Of those children receiving transplants within three and a half months after birth, 94 percent were alive five years later. The best results, not surprisingly, were seen after transplant from "matched sibling" donors. But among patients who didn't have a matched sibling, overall five-year survival rates were quite high 77 to 93 percent … Continue reading →