Hematopoietic Transplantation: Cancer

Hematopoietic transplantation refers to the therapeutic procedure that involves the introduction of hematopoietic stem cells into a patient to reconstitute his or her immune system. More than 50,000 stem cell transplants are performed each year worldwide. The transfusion, or delivery, of healthy stem cells to the recipient’s bloodstream reestablishes a healthy immune system. This sort of transplantation is most commonly performed in three clinical scenarios: (1) to treat malignancies such as cancer in which the immune system is weakened or impaired, (2) to replace an absent or poorly functioning hematopoietic or immune system, and (3) to treat genetic diseases caused by insufficient gene expression by performing a transplantation from donors with normal gene expression.

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are taken from a “donor” and transplanted into ...