Stem cell transplantation shows better results in leukemia patients: Researchers

A group of medical researchers have recently claimed that using stem cell transplantation to treat patients with a serious but a very rare form of chronic blood cancer 'Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia' (JMML) has shown improved results.

Researchers at the Children's Hospital Los Angeles (CHLA), led by Dr. Hisham Abdel-Azim, looked at the children with Juvenile Myelomonocytic Leukemia (JMML) who underwent cell transplantation at the hospital and noticed that all of them were alive and in clinical remission.

Abdel-Azim said that the lack of transplant-related mortality in the group of children we studied at the Children's Center for Cancer and Blood Diseases at the hospital suggested that BUMEL (Intravenous Busulfan and Melphalan) may represent a successful cell transplantation high-dose chemotherapy regimen.

He said that it was also possible that administering conventional dose chemotherapy, before cell transplantation, to patients with more progressive disease may have contributed to improved outcomes.

He added that a follow up clinical trial was warranted to confirm these promising findings.

The study has been published in the journal Blood.