Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1
Short History of Stem Cells Transplantation
with Emphasis on Hematological Disorders
The beginning is the most important part of the work.
Plato, Republic
Stem Cell History
Bone Marrow Transplantation
Stem cell history started almost a century ago with administration of bone marrow
by mouth to the patients with anemia and leukemia [
1
]. At that time, in the early
1900s, European scientists realized that all blood cells originate from one particular
“stem cell” located within the bone marrow, tissue where the entire hematopoiesis
take place. Early studies with animals quickly revealed that the bone marrow was
the organ most sensitive to the damaging effects of radiation. Very soon, it became
clear that reinfusion of marrow cells could rescue lethally irradiated animals. Mice
with defective bone marrow could be restored to health with infusions into the blood
stream of marrow taken from other mice [
2
] .
Among the early attempts in humans to do this were several transplants carried
out in France following a radiation accident in the late 1950s (Vinca, former
Yugoslavia). The first successful bone marrow transplantation was performed at
the University of Minnesota in 1968 on a 4-month-old boy suffering from a severe
combined immunodeficiency disease (“bubble boy syndrome”). A sibling of the
boy had already passed away from the same disease. His body accepted bone mar-
row extracted from his sister, and his immune system was restored. That boy is
now a healthy man—fully employed, living in Connecticut and the proud father
of twins.
The beginning of transplantation as a routine therapy started with critical discov-
ery about the human immune system by French medical researcher (1958) Jean
Dausset who described the first of many human histocompatibility antigens.
