What is a Stem-Cell Transplant?

A stem-cell transplant is the latest medical innovation of a bone-marrow transplant.  Bone-marrow transplants have been done for several decades now, almost always in the hopes of curing blood and auto-immune related diseases as well as, in some instances, mass tumor diseases.  Stem-cell transplants have only been done in the last few years.  I’ll tell you more about the differences between these two procedures later (see the Transplant Basics page).

The category of auto-immune disorders is broad, but for our purposes we can simply define them as syndromes where the body attacks itself.  The second category – blood-related cancers – is a little easier to define.  Some of the most common ones are leukemia, lymphoma and myeloma.  Mass tumors that may be impacted by a transplant are only a small subset of all of the mass tumor categories.  For example, tests have shown that transplants do not generally work on lung cancer or breast cancer, but may be helpful for testicular cancer and some carcinomas, especially in children.