What Is a Stem-Cell Transplantation? Why Is It Performed?

Certain types of cancer and cancer treatments can destroy your bone marrow and deplete your blood cells. Leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma can cause your bone marrow to be taken over by a large number of defective and immature blood cells that can interfere with or even shut down normal blood cell production.

Doctors perform stem-cell transplantations in these cases to restore your blood cell counts to optimal levels. In treating other types of cancer, doctors often need to give high doses of chemotherapy (and sometimes radiation) to destroy the malignant cells. These treatments can destroy healthy cells and bone marrow, as well as malignant cancer cells, because they target all rapidly dividing cells in the blood.

Stem-cell transplantation replenishes stem cells that are destroyed by these treatments, allowing patients to receive high doses of chemotherapy and radiation to treat their cancer.

The major new development in the area of transplantation is the introduction of CAR T-cells for the treatment of selected patients with leukemia and lymphoma. Click here to see introduction of CAR T-cells.

Click here to learn more about stem-cell transplantation