Pam,

Thanks.  I am pretty excited about how well she has been doing.  The clinical trial she was in is Phase II, I think.  It started at the University of Minnesota, but is now being tried at several facilities around the country in small numbers.  I think our facility, Siteman Cancer Center in St. Louis, was going to try to enroll 15 patients for the study.  I honestly forget a lot of the details.  They looked for a specific mismatch at two places between patient and donor.  The hope was the mistmatch would lessen the chances of GVHD and increase GVL.  I think they removed the T Cells from the donor's stem cells.  The theory being that T Cells may increase the risk of GVHD.  (This I think is an area of controversy, and not everyone in the medical/research world agrees with the theory that T Cells cause increased risk of GVHD.)  The other big thing, and something I think is really important, was no immuno suppresent drugs post transplant.  On the boards I hear about people who are on immuno drugs for a year or more post transplant and how rough those drugs can be on the body.  My wife did have to take 3 months of Prednizone post transplant to deal with a GVHD rash, but she did not take any of the normal immuno suppresent drugs. 

I am hopeful that this study continues and researchers will be able to develop improved transplant protocols.  I will note that a patient in the study in St. Louis did not do as well as my wife, I'm not sure how the study is doing as a whole. 

I try to read everything I can on cancer research. It is an evil disease and the more researchers learn about it, the more questions are raised.  While I hope there comes a time when research develops a treatment of cancer across the board, it seems like now doctors/researchers are working towards a patient specific treatment.  Depending on the genetics, type of cancer, etc, what might work for one patient, might not work for the next, and doctors need to be able to be creative and flexible and think on their feet to craft specialized treatments for individual patients.

Kevin

poskinmel....best of luck to you and your child with the upcoming transplant.

As far as I know it was a T Cell depleted transplant.  I know there are other clinical trials looking into T Cell depleted tranplants.  I'm not sure if this study was different in that no immune suppression drugs were used.  I also remember the doctors telling us that this clinical trial used a "milder" or less harsh round of chemo and TBI before the transplant.  At least less harsh than our cancer center would normally use with transplants.  My wife had 2 rounds of TBI, and I think they usualy like to use usually like to go with 3 rounds.  And I forget the exact chemo cocktale.  I remember they used the ATG, made from rabbits.

I found a link to the study on the Siteman Cancer Center website for those interested in the details:

http://www.siteman.wustl.edu/ProtDetail.aspx?ProtID=4672

Hope this helps anyone interested.

Kevin