Investigators at St. Jude
Children's Research Hospital have demonstrated in mice a way that might
reduce the time it takes for a bone marrow cell transplant to rebuild a
child's immune system, and so reduce the risk of potentially fatal virus
infections that can occur during this time.
A report on this work appears in the current online issue of the
journal Stem Cell.
The St. Jude team showed that the current way of harvesting specific
stem cells from donated bone marrow to capture many of the stem cells
called CD34+ cells fails to capture many of those that might be more
vigorous in reproducing and rebuilding the immune system.
Specifically, they demonstrated that the current method of using a so-
called class II antibody captures most of the less aggressive CD34+ cells.
But using both a class II and class III antibody against CD34+ cells
captures many of the more vigorous cells according to Raymond Barfield,
M.D., Ph.D., assistant member of the St. Jude Bone Marrow Transplantation
division and senior author of the report.
Other authors of this study include Mario Otto (now at Akron Children's
Hospital, Ohio); Xiaohua Chen, William J. Martin, Wing Leung, James
Knowles, Marti Holladay and Jim Houston (all of St. Jude); and Rupert
Handgretinger (University of Tubingen, Germany). This work was supported in
part by a Cancer Center Support grant, ALSAC and the Assisi Foundation of
Memphis.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital is internationally recognized for
its pioneering work in finding cures and saving children with cancer and
other catastrophic diseases. Founded by late entertainer Danny Thomas and
based in Memphis, Tenn., St. Jude freely shares its discoveries with
scientific and medical communities around the world. No family ever pays
for treatments not covered by insurance, and families without insurance are
never asked to pay. St. Jude is financially supported by ALSAC, its
fund-raising organization. For more information, please visit
stjude/.
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
stjude/