How Can Experts Improve Stem Cell Transplants for Sickle Cell Patients?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Seethal Jacob
In this program:
How can sickle cell disease experts help improve stem cell transplants for patients? Watch as expert Dr. Seethal Jacob shares potential transplant advances that are currently in clinical studies for increased transplant donor candidates and for improved treatments before and after transplants.
Transcript
Interviewer:
I'd like to speak about allogeneic stem cell transplant procedures. Can you speak to how experts are perhaps working to make this process less debilitated?
Dr. Seethal Jacob:
Yeah. That's a great question. So stem cell transplant or bone marrow transplant is right now the most widely available care that we have for sickle cell disease, but there are lots of caveats to that, unfortunately. The number one caveat to that is the availability of the donor so, as a patient going through transplant, you need someone to donate their bone marrow or their stem cells that will be given to you during the transplant process. Advances that have been made in that typically the recommendation is for a sibling who does not have sickle cell disease, who also happens to be a match for you to donate their stem cells or their bone marrow for you to have your transplant. Well, that's not available to all of our patients, and even if they have a sibling who doesn't have sickle cell disease, they may not be a match for them to receive their stem cells. So the advances that have been made with that is clinical trials now looking at, well, what about if your donor is what we call a haplo donor or a half-match, this expands the donor pool to include parents, sometimes aunts or cousins as well, who could be a potential match for you, and so it increases a number of patients who could have a transplant as a result of that, which is great. There are other clinical trials that are also looking at how can we reduce the toxicity that's associated with some of the treatments that are necessary to get your body ready to accept the stem cells from that donor, and those studies are looking at what we call reduced intensity conditioning, meaning reduced toxicity for preoperative medications before the transplant and also decreasing post-transplant complications like graft-versus-host disease.
All of those studies are ongoing right now, and I think it's wonderful to know that there is a large transplant community that is really focused on improving not just the outcomes associated with transplant in our patients with sickle cell disease, but also improving any of the toxicities or other side effects that might happen as a result of that.
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