One promising treatment for patients with blood cancers is stem cell transplantation. Doctors completely eliminate the patient’s immune system by aiming chemotherapy, radiation or both at their bone marrow before replacing it with a donor’s immune system. Because the bone marrow produces blood and immune cells, completely substituting cancerous bone marrow with healthy cells could help the body reestablish a functioning immune system and replace cancerous blood cells.
This procedure is not without risks. A key complication hematologists like me worry about is graft-versus-host disease, where the donor’s immune system recognizes the patient’s body as “foreign” and launches an attack. Up to 50% of patients who receive a stem cell transplant develop graft-versus-host disease.
