On 21 July the first allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation was performed at the Department of Haematology Medical University of Lodz. A 49-year-old female patient with acute myeloid leukaemia was the transplant recipient. Currently, the transplant from a compatible donor provides the only possibility for a complete recovery from the disease.

The Department of Haematology has been preparing for 1,5 years to implement transplantation procedures for allogenic transplants from unrelated donors. The first stage involved the agreement signed between the Department and the Military Institute of Medicine in Warsaw to seek and select donors for our patients. The next stage included the receipt of Poltransplant consent to finance health services in the search and selection of unrelated and/or haploidentical hematopoietic cell donors.

As the last stage, contracts were signed with specialised transport companies whose couriers will collect transplant material from bone marrow collection centres around the world.

The implementation of allotransplantation from matched unrelated donors will allow for comprehensive treatment at Copernicus Memorial Hospital, especially for patients with acute leukaemia.  The number of patients currently qualified for transplantation at other haematology centres in Poland will be successively reduced.

What is allotransplantation?

Transplantations from unrelated donors are performed when patients with blood cancer do not have the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) compatible with related donors. Then national and global registers of potential bone marrow donors are searched in order to select an optimal genetically compatible donor for a given patient. Once found, the donor must give the consent and undergo medical examination with the necessary diagnostics to be ultimately qualified to donate haematopoietic stem cells. What’s important, the donor always remain anonymous for the recipient.

Bone marrow transplantation at the Department of Haematology

The first bone marrow transplantation at the Department of Haematology in Lodz was carried out in 2001. It was an autologous transplant i.e., the patient received his own haematopoietic stem cells after previous chemotherapy applied to destroy bone marrow cancer cells.

Since the first transplantation, the Department of Haematology has performeed a total of 900 auto- and allo-genic transplants.

The first allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the second success of the Department of Haematology this year. Last May, an innovative therapy with chimeric antigen receptor-modified T (CAR-T) cells was used for the first time in a  patient with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma.