Categories: Stem Cell News
      Date: Jan 21, 2010
     Title: Stem Cell Treatment for Leukemia Improves

WebMD Health News - "Stem Cell Treatment For Leukemia Improves"

Stem Cell Treatment for Leukemia Improves

Taken from WebMD Health News

This week WebMD Health News has written the following article, featuring the developments in stem cell research:

Jan. 19, 2010 -- Leukemia patients who receive stem cell transplants from the umbilical cord blood of newborns are usually vulnerable to life-threatening infections for at least a month as their immune systems recover.

Now researchers from Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center may have found a way to dramatically shorten this recovery period and reduce infection-related deaths.

In a small, early study, the researchers were able to successfully manipulate umbilical cord-derived stem cells to speed the production of infection-fighting white blood cells.

It took about two weeks for the transplanted cells to start making white blood cells on their own -- a process known as engraftment -- compared to a month when patients got the non-manipulated cord blood.

The research appears in the Jan. 17 issue of the journal Nature Medicine.

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