Bone Marrow Transplant (BMT)

• Context (TH): Call to make bone marrow transplant procedure available in Madurai Govt. Rajaji Hospital.

Bone marrow transplant (BMT)

Credit: Care Hospitals

• BMT involves replacing diseased blood-forming cells with healthy ones.
• Blood-forming cells, also known as blood stem cells, are immature cells located in the bone marrow, where they develop into red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.
• Once mature, these cells exit the bone marrow and circulate in the bloodstream.

Types of BMT

• Autologous transplant:
  • In this method, blood-forming cells are harvested, preserved by freezing, and stored.
  • Subsequently, they are returned to your body following chemotherapy (chemo) and sometimes radiation therapy.
• Allogeneic transplant:
  • In this method, healthy blood-forming cells are donated by someone else.
  • The donor can be a family member or someone unrelated to you.
• Haploidentical transplant:
  • A haploidentical transplant is a form of allogeneic transplant where healthy blood-forming cells from a half-matched donor, usually a family member, are used to replace unhealthy cells.

Stem Cells

• Stem cells are unique human cells with the ability to transform into various types of cells within the body, ranging from muscle cells to brain cells.
• Stem cell banking plays a crucial role in stem cell therapy.

Types of stem cell

• Embryonic stem cells:
  • These stem cells are present exclusively in the earliest stages of development.
• Adult stem cells
  • These are cells that proliferate to repair adult organs and tissues when needed.
  • They are found in nearly all human body organs and are multipotent, capable of generating a limited range of mature cell types specific to their residing tissues.
  • An example is hematopoietic stem cells in bone marrow, which produce various blood cells.
  • Certain tissue-specific stem cells, known as unipotent or bipotent, generate one or two types of mature cells; for instance, skin stem cells regenerate skin cells as unipotent cells.
• Induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPSCs:
  • These cells are artificially created in laboratories using cells from the body.
  • iPSC cells exhibit characteristics akin to embryonic stem cells and were first successfully generated in humans in 2007.

To learn more about CART–T cells, refer > CAR-T Cell Therapy