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Why should you receive treatment
for hematologic malignancies and bone marrow transplantation in AMC
Hematologic malignancies are cancers that occur in blood or blood components such as hematopoietic lymph glands and lymphoid organs, and it includes leukemia, malignant lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and aplastic anemia. Hematologic malignancies require accurate diagnosis and treatment and often result in complications such as hematological infection, treatment-associated infections, or bleeding. Therefore, it is important to deal with many issues that may arise during treatment correctly. AMC’s Hematologic Cancer and BMT Center has successfully treated patients with hematologic malignancies based on specialists’ long clinical experience and the development of new therapies.
Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is one of the primary therapies for hematologic malignancies. It is suitable for hematologic malignancies that cannot be cured by conventional chemotherapy, has a high risk of recurrence, has relapsed, or does not respond to other therapies. The Hematologic Cancer and BMT Center not only show the best performance regarding the number of HSCTs performed and success rates but also makes remarkable achievements in alternative donor transplantation that can be used for a high-risk transplant and patients having no matched bone marrow donors.
The center has contributed to enhancing treatment results as well as research of hematologic cancers both at home and abroad by implementing various systematic clinical studies on intractable and recurrent/refractory hematologic cancer treatment.
Treatment options
It is estimated that around 9,400 patients are diagnosed with hematologic malignancies a year in Korea, including lymphoma (5,100), multiple myeloma (1,300), and acute and chronic leukemia (3,000) (Statistic basis of the 2013 National Cancer Registration). Most of them needed chemotherapy aiming for complete recovery and autologous/allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantations.
The department of hematology is trying to offer the best treatment to patients with hematologic malignancies through accurate diagnosis, chemotherapy, and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The Hematologic Cancer and BMT Center provides the following treatments.
For multiple myeloma, lymphoma, and some acute leukemia patients, an anticancer agent, and G-CSF are injected, and peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cells are collected from patients. Then the collected stem cells are frozen. The frozen cells are thawed and injected into the patients after a high-dose chemotherapy treatment.
Allogenic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation
This procedure is aimed to cure various diseases such as acute and chronic leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma, aplastic anemia, myelodysplastic syndrome, and myeloproliferative neoplasm. Patients are admitted to an aseptic room and administered with an anticancer agent and immunosuppressant, which is a conditioning therapy. Then they receive peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. Hematopoietic stem cells (HSC) can be collected from human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-identical sibling donors, HLA-identical stranger donors, and HLA-haploidentical family donors. After transplantation, antibiotics, antivirus agent, antifungal agent, and immunosuppressant are administered to prevent potential complications.
Haploidentical bone marrow transplantation from family member donors
Bone marrow transplantation from HLA-haploidentical family donors (parents, children or siblings) is available for patients who cannot receive bone marrow transplantation because there are no matched HLA-identical siblings or stranger donors.
AMC is Asia’ leader in haploidentical bone marrow transplantation from family member donors, together with Beijing University of China, and successfully carries out a clinical study of the latest therapy that combined NK cell therapy from haploidentical bone marrow donors. AMC contributes to increasing the cure rates of intractable hematologic disorder patients based on abundant experience in haploidentical bone marrow transplantation from family member donors and the development of advanced therapies.
