What is bone marrow transplant and why is it used to treat pediatric AML?
So bone marrow transplant, also referred to as a stem cell transplant, is a medical procedure that we use for patients with high risk blood disorders and blood cancers. When we use this for high risk blood cancers, like certain cases of acute myeloid leukemia, we use this procedure two fold.
First, to give very high dose chemotherapy that otherwise would destroy their ability to recover their blood counts afterwards, but also to give this new bone marrow and a new immune system. And the immune system is expected to recognize any residual cancer cells as foreign and destroy them like they would wipe up any residual infection when we give a patient antibiotics.
So this is a procedure that is really the first form of immunotherapy that we give for cancer. And we've been using for several decades. It's a high risk procedure. So we only use this procedure for patients in whom we think we are unlikely to get a cure with standard chemotherapy and other therapies.
HealthTree • February 28, 2026