Bone marrow transplantation

Abstract

Over the last 20 years allogeneic bone marrow transplantation from an HLA-identical sibling donor has become the treatment of choice for a number of human haematological malignancies, severe aplastic anaemia, some congenital diseases of the immune and haemopoietic systems, and some inborn errors of metabolism. Recently, the successful introduction of HLA-matched unrelated donor transplants, convenient T cell depletion technology, combination immunosuppressive therapy to minimise graft-versus-host disease, blood products that are seronegative for cytomegalovirus, effective antiviral agents, and cloned haemopoietic and immune system growth factors have markedly increased the scope of bone marrow transplantation. Additionally, autologous transplantation appears to have promise especially in lymphoma and breast cancer.