Hematopoietic cell transplantation: five decades of progress.
During the past 50 years, the role of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) has changed from a desperate therapeutic maneuver plagued by apparently insurmountable complications to a curative treatment modality for thousands of patients with hematologic diseases. Now, cure rates following human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allogeneic HCT with matched siblings exceed 85% for some otherwise lethal diseases, such as chronic myeloid leukemia, aplastic anemia, or thalassemia. In addition, the recent development of non-myeloablative conditioning and stem cell transplantation has opened the way to include elderly patients with a wide variety of hematologic malignancies. Further progress in adoptive transfer of T cell populations with relative tumor specificity would make the transplant procedure more effective and would extend the use of allogeneic HCT for treatment of non-hematopoietic malignancies.
Baron
Frédéric
F
Transplantation Biology Program, Clinical Research Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA 98109-1024, USA.
Storb
Rainer
R
Little
Marie-Térèse
MT
D000818:Animals; D006086:Graft vs Host Disease; D006680:HLA Antigens / Q000276:immunology / Q000378:metabolism; D006402:Hematologic Diseases / Q000628:therapy*; D018380:Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation / Q000266:history; D049673:History, 20th Century; D049674:History, 21st Century; D006801:Humans; D018183:Transplantation Chimera; D019172:Transplantation Conditioning; D014181:Transplantation Immunology; D014184:Transplantation, Homologous / Q000266:history
D006680:HLA Antigens