Conquering the lethal complication of bone marrow transplantation

NFCR Fellow Curt Civin, M.D.
University of Maryland School of Medicine

Bone marrow transplantation is a life-saving procedure used in patients with leukemia and other diseases to replenish their vital blood-forming system, which is often destroyed by high-dose chemotherapy treatment. However, the very same procedure may cost a patient’s life if a severe complication known as the graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) occurs. When a patient receives a bone marrow transplant from a donor (allogeneic transplant), a subset of the immune cells from the transplant can be activated to mount vigorous immunologic attacks on the patient’s (the recipient’s) tissues, causing GVHD. This side effect could be lethal, which greatly limits the clinical application of allogeneic bone marrow transplantation.

NFCR Fellow Curt Civin, M.D. (formerly at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine) and his team have developed a unique strategy in the laboratory which sends the anti-recipient immune cells onto a suicidal path, while keeping intact the “recipient-friendly” cells from the transplant, which is essential for successful blood replenishment in the patient. Recently, in a project supported by NFCR and another sponsor, he and his team have successfully completed preclinical tests with this approach using human cells. Now this promising treatment strategy is one step away from being launched into clinical tests in patients, giving them hope of conquering the complications during precious bone marrow transplantation. The work of Dr. Civin was recently published in the Journal of Immunology.