Hematopoietic cell transplants using cells from bone marrow, blood, or less often, umbilical cord blood cells are given after high- or moderate-dose chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. Donors can be the person with cancer (an autotransplant) or a human leukocyte antigen (HLA)–matched related or unrelated person (an allotransplant—see also Overview of Cancer Therapy). Typically, such transplants are reserved for patients with a high risk that conventional therapies will fail or in whom initial therapy has failed.
Autotransplants are used to treat lymphomas, plasma cell myeloma, and rare solid cancers such as testis cancer, Wilms and Ewing sarcomas, and neuroblastomas. Very occasionally, they are used to treat leukemias.
Allotransplants are used to treat leukemias and some lymphomas.
General reference
1. Kanate AS, Majhail NS, Savani BN, et al: Indications for hematopoietic cell transplantation and immune effector cell therapy: Guidelines from the American Society for Transplantation and Cellular Therapy. Biol Blood Marrow Transplant 26(7):1247–1256, 2020. doi: 10.1016/j.bbmt.2020.03.002
