Word: transplantation
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...fall of 1997, doctors told Alan J. Kuo '85 he had one month to live. The only thing that could save his life was a bone marrow transplant--and finding a marrow match was a challenge...
Gene therapy and gene-based drugs are two ways we could benefit from our growing mastery of genetic science. But there will be others as well, including new kinds of vaccines, new sources of transplant tissue, even techniques doctors may someday use to stave off the aging process. Here are just a few of the remarkable therapies on the cutting edge of genetic research that could make their way into mainstream medicine in the coming years...
...doing everything you can to protect your children? What if, God forbid, your daughter developed leukemia and needed a bone-marrow transplant? What if neither you nor your spouse could offer a close enough match to donate marrow? If you'd had the foresight to preserve some critical blood cells found in the umbilical cord and placenta that nourished your other children in the womb, you might be able to save your daughter's life...
First, it helps to understand that bone-marrow transplants are the most unforgiving of all transplant operations, requiring closer matches in tissue types between donors and recipients than for, say, hearts or kidneys. Because the immune system comes from the marrow, a transplant of that reddish pulp is, in effect, an immune-system transplant. There's the usual possibility that the body may reject the graft as "foreign." Then there's the almost surreal danger that the transplanted immune system will attack and kill its host...
...birth, seems to be an ideal solution. The placenta is teeming with the all-important stem cells that can generate a new immune system. Even better, these cells are, as doctors put it, "naive," making them less likely to attack their new host. As a result, a cord-blood transplant doesn't have to match a recipient quite so closely as a bone-marrow transplant. This experimental treatment could prove especially helpful to African-American patients and other minorities whose greater genetic diversity often means they have trouble finding a good bone-marrow match...