Information for patients about Stem cell transplantation unit

In allogeneic stem cell transplantations stem cells are collected from healthy, volunteer donors.

The donor can be:

• HLA-identical sibling. This is always a primary choice.
• haploidentical donor. Donation practices have recently been modified and instead of HLA-identical match, donors for a haploidentical transplant need be only a 50 percent match to the recipient. This means that now it is possible for first-degree relatives, under specified conditions, to donate stem cells. Thus, a parent may donate to a child and vice versa. Haplo donor can also be from extended family members such as aunts, uncles or even cousins. These transplantations are called haploidentical haematopoietic stem cell transplantations.
• voluntary unrelated HLA-identical donor. A suitable donor will usually be identified through searches in international stem cell donor registers. These registers have a database of some 30 million voluntary donors. Through a computer search of this database it is possible to identify a suitable stem cell donor. In Finland, the Finnish Red Cross Blood Service maintains a stem cell registry of some 40,000 donors.

Allogeneic stem cell transplantations are usually used to treat acute leukemias and myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS).

Patients from all of Finland are referred to us for allogeneic stem cell transplantation. If the treatment is carried out in some other language than Finnish, Swedish or English, interpretation services are available at a fee.

In an autologous transplant, patient's own blood-forming stem cells are collected. Patient is then treated with high doses of chemotherapy. The high-dose treatment kills the cancer cells, but it also gets rid of the blood-producing cells that are left in the bone marrow. Afterward, the collected stem cells are put back into patient's bloodstream, allowing the bone marrow to produce new blood cells.

Autologous stem cell transplantations are usually performed to treat myeloma and lymphoma.

All autologous stem cell transplantations within the area of special responsibility of the Turku University Hospital are performed at our stem cell transplantation unit.