title: Stem cell plasticity and blood and marrow transplantation: a clinical strategy.
abstract: The newly described phenomenon of stem cell plasticity raises interesting biological questions and offers exciting opportunities in clinical application. This review uses the well-established practice of blood and marrow transplantation as a paradigm to explore the clinical consequences of this finding. Recently proposed non-myeloablative conditioning regimens have shown that mixed donor-host hematolymphoid chimerism can be established with relatively low toxicity in both animal studies and human trials. Hematopoietic growth factor treatment of transplanted patients can mobilize a large number of donor stem cells to migrate from marrow to non-hematopoietic organs. We propose that these advances, in conjunction with the developmental plasticity of stem cells, can constitute components of a clinical strategy to use blood and marrow transplantation as a platform to treat systemic diseases involving non-hematopoietic tissues.
authors.affiliation: Division of Hematology/Oncology, Children's Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA. william.tse@tch.harvard.edu
authors.forename: William T
authors.initials: WT
authors.lastname: Tse
authors.forename: Matthew C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Egalka
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D016026:Bone Marrow Transplantation / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002465:Cell Movement / Q000187:drug effects; D064987:Cell- and Tissue-Based Therapy / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000379:methods*; D002678:Chimera; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D016298:Hematopoietic Cell Growth Factors / Q000494:pharmacology; D006413:Hematopoietic System / Q000187:drug effects; D006801:Humans; D013234:Stem Cells / Q000145:classification / Q000166:cytology* / Q000187:drug effects; D019172:Transplantation Conditioning
chemical_list: D016298:Hematopoietic Cell Growth Factors