How blood cancer research might help organ transplant patients

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Fred Hutch study suggests certain immune cells are source of antibodies that attack donated organs

Each day, 13 patients awaiting transplants for severe kidney disease in the U.S. lose their lives before a compatible kidney can be found.

Frequently, it is simply that there are not enough donated organs available, but sometimes it is because the right donor is too rare. Of the 92,000 people in U.S. waiting this year for a kidney transplant, about one in ten will have an especially hard time finding a compatible donor. Read more from the Fred Hutch News Service.

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Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplant Outcomes Improve With Diverse Gut Microbes, Immune Cells

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NEW YORK – A team from Weill Cornell Medical College, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and elsewhere has demonstrated that interactions between the gut microbial community and the immune system can influence an individual’s response to a bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and other blood conditions.

Past studies have suggested ties between microbial diversity and favorable allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HCT) outcomes, or transplants involving stem cells from healthy donors. For their new study, the researchers set out to characterize fecal microbiome features alongside immune cell features and clinical outcomes in allo-HCT recipients — work they presented in Science Translational Medicine on Wednesday.
Read more in GenomeWeb.

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