Stem Cell and Transplant Therapy

Cancer treatments that replace, rebuild or support a patient's blood-forming and immune system after high-dose therapy has destroyed it, using transplanted stem cells or bone marrow. This includes hematopoietic stem cell transplantation broadly, autologous stem cell transplantation, which uses a patient's own previously collected stem cells, and bone marrow transplantation, the original and still-used form of this treatment for blood cancers and certain other malignancies. A transplant procedure is grouped here regardless of the chemotherapy or radiation regimen used to prepare the patient for it beforehand, since the transplant itself, not the preparatory regimen, is this group's defining treatment.