Word: marrows
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Another problem is getting viral vectors into bone-marrow stem cells, from which all of the blood's white cells are descended. Even when the rare stem cells are found, inserting genes into them is difficult because they divide infrequently, and the vectors used in gene therapy insert genes only into cells that are dividing. Had Anderson's group been able to use stem cells in the landmark therapy with little Ashanthi DeSilva, for example, follow-up treatments would not have been necessary. Endowed with the normal gene, the marrow stem cells would have produced a continuing supply...
...malignant tumor's terrible advance: not surgery, not radiation, not standard chemotherapy. So to save the nine-year-old's life, his doctors decided to kill him--nearly. They increased the dosage of an anticancer agent known as cyclophosphamide to levels that completely wiped out Dustin's bone marrow and thus destroyed his ability to generate new red and white blood cells. Then they revived their small patient by injecting him with healthy marrow that had been drawn in advance from his hipbone. The result: today Dustin is 12 and about to enter middle school in Pulaski, Virginia. For almost...
Useful as they are, these drugs share the same serious drawback. Because they target all dividing cells, they also kill off normal tissue in the skin, hair and bone marrow. The next generation of anticancer agents, however, promises to be much more selective. By targeting oncogenes, for example, researchers hope to switch off the signals that prompt cancer cells to divide in the first place. Particularly promising is a class of drugs known as farnesyltransferase inhibitors, which have been shown to shrink tumors while sparing normal tissues. "Oncology is not a profession that inspires optimism," admits Dr. Allen Oliff, director...
Starzl acknowledges that this insight had also occurred to other researchers. Scientists, going back as far as 1960 Nobel prizewinner Peter Medawar, had come to recognize that tolerance was possible. If bone marrow, for instance, would only accept an interloping cell, the larger system would follow suit. The trouble was, the only way to achieve that was to kill off the body's entire current bone-marrow supply and replace it with another--a technique oncologists use as a last-ditch weapon to try to cleanse patients of such systemic cancers as leukemia and breast cancer...
...Bone-marrow transplants cured SICKLE CELL ANEMIA in three-quarters of youngsters in a recent study. But the radical procedure will probably be reserved for the worst cases because 10% of the patients died...