Stem cell plasticity and blood and marrow transplantation: A clinical strategy

✍ Scribed by William T. Tse; Matthew C. Egalka

• Book ID: 102299519
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 114 KB
• Volume: 85
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0730-2312
• DOI: 10.1002/jcb.10038

✦ Synopsis

The newly described phenomenon of stem cell plasticity raises interesting biological questions and offers exciting opportunities in clinical application. This review uses the well-established practice of blood and marrow transplantation as a paradigm to explore the clinical consequences of this finding. Recently proposed non-myeloablative conditioning regimens have shown that mixed donor-host hematolymphoid chimerism can be established with relatively low toxicity in both animal studies and human trials. Hematopoietic growth factor treatment of transplanted patients can mobilize a large number of donor stem cells to migrate from marrow to non-hematopoietic organs. We propose that these advances, in conjunction with the developmental plasticity of stem cells, can constitute components of a clinical strategy to use blood and marrow transplantation as a platform to treat systemic diseases involving non-hematopoietic tissues.