Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
Medical procedure to replace blood or immune stem cells / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT) is the transplantation of multipotent hematopoietic stem cells, usually derived from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood, in order to replicate inside a patient and produce additional normal blood cells.[1][2][3][4][5][6] HSCT may be autologous (the patient's own stem cells are used), syngeneic (stem cells from an identical twin), or allogeneic (stem cells from a donor).[4][5]
It is most often performed for patients with certain cancers of the blood or bone marrow, such as multiple myeloma, leukemia, some types of lymphoma and immune deficiencies.[5] In these cases, the recipient's immune system is usually suppressed with radiation or chemotherapy before the transplantation. Infection and graft-versus-host disease are major complications of allogeneic HSCT.[5]
HSCT remains a dangerous procedure with many possible complications; it is reserved for patients with life-threatening diseases. As survival following the procedure has increased, its use has expanded beyond cancer to autoimmune diseases[7][8] and hereditary skeletal dysplasias, notably malignant infantile osteopetrosis[9][10] and mucopolysaccharidosis.[11]