Dr. Donato on Trends in Blood and Marrow Transplantation

Michele L. Donato, MD, medical director, Blood and Marrow Collection Facility, John Theurer Cancer Center, discusses emerging trends in bone marrow and stem cell transplantation.

Donato says one emerging trend in transplantation is using the graft for immunotherapy. More transplants using haploidentical donors are being conducted because physicians know that they can immunologically predict which donor would be preferable in terms of disease control, infection prevention, and graft-versus-host disease prevention. Physicians and researchers are continuing to work on how to best select donors, Donato says.

Another emerging trend in transplantation is the manipulation of the graft to get a better graft-versus-tumor effect. Donato believes this will be a trend for the future of transplantation.