Stem cells step in to save bone marrow patients

摘要

Children who had seemed doomed to die within weeks may have been rescued by injections of stem ceils originally extracted from healthy bone marrow donors. The children all had graft-versus-host disease, a condition in which bone marrow transplants aimed at treating diseases such as leukaemia end up attacking the child instead. Between 30 and 60 per cent of children receiving such transplants develop the condition.