Dr. Flomenberg and Dolores Grosso Comment on Half-Match Bone Marrow Transplants in Journal of the National Cancer Institute
Bone marrow transplant is recommended for certain cancers such as leukemia and lymphoma; illnesses such as sickle cell anemia; and when treatment for cancer has destroyed a patient's bone marrow.
The odds of locating a perfect-match bone marrow donor is better than 50% for whites but drops to less than 10% for ethnic minorities, according to a news article in the Journal of National Cancer Institute (JNCI). But an innovative approach that uses half-match donors gives ethnic minorities a better chance.
In the article "Half-Match Bone Marrow Transplants May Raise Odds for More Recipients," the author describes the two-step, half-match procedure performed at the Kimmel Cancer Center at Jefferson, which was started by Jefferson's Neal Flomenberg, MD, chair of medical oncology, and nurse practitioner Dolores Grosso.
The half-match donor transplant results have been so well that "Jefferson is offering patients entry into four open clinical trials that test various combinations of drug therapy in addition to the transplant," writes the author of the article.
Publication: Journal of the National Cancer Institute Vol. 103, Issue 10
Published: 5/6/2011