First, what is the difference between stem cell transplantation and bone marrow transplantation?
In essence they are both the same. What one is trying to do in cancer therapy is to avoid damage to the blood system and the stem cells are the cells that exist in our bone marrow that produce the blood components. You can obtain these cells from two different sources. You can get them from the bone marrow itself by doing a bone marrow transplant. Or, you can get them from the blood. In this case, the stem cells have to be mobilized or pushed from the bone marrow into the blood by giving patients proteins called cytokines. The stem cells are then harvested from the blood, hence the term stem cell transplantation. Stem cell and bone marrow transplantation have the same purpose and that is to rescue the patient’s blood system after high-dose chemotherapy. Where does “selection” come into the procedure? When one harvests either bone marrow or the stem cells from peripheral blood many different types of blood cells are obtained. Many of these cells are irrelevant in terms of being able to
