How are bone marrow or stem cell transplants used for cancer treatment?
One purpose of bone marrow transplants and peripheral blood stem cell transplants in cancer treatment is to enable patients to receive safely very high doses of chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy. High doses of chemotherapy and radiation therapy kill cancer cells, but they also destroy some healthy cells. BMT and PBSCT replace those healthy stem cells. Then the healthy, transplanted stem cells can restore the bone marrow’s ability to produce the blood cells the patient needs. In essence, this gives the patient a new immune system.
