Harvesting bone marrow for transplantWIKIMEDIA, AXELBOLDTThe drug cyclophosphamide is effective at preventing graft-versus-host disease in patients that have received bone marrow transplants, but until now it wasn’t clear how the drug worked. A paper published today (November 13) in Science Translational Medicine reveals that while the compound destroys some immune cells that might cause graft-versus host disease, it spares regulatory T cells (Tregs)—immune-suppressing cells that promote tolerance of foreign tissue.
“How the low incidence of graft-versus-host disease could occur through post-transplant cyclophosphamide was a mystery, and I think . . . there is now a plausible mechanism,” said Krishna Komanduri, a professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology at the University of Miami in Florida, who was not involved in the study.
Patients with blood diseases like leukemia and lymphoma often require bone marrow transplants to replace the diseased cells with healthy immune cells. However, the newly introduced cells recognize the host as foreign and can mount an immune response: graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). Standard immunosuppressive drugs are effective at preventing the early onset of acute GVHD, but up to 50 percent of patients eventually develop a chronic version of the condition and, as a result, require ...
