A new technique cures most people with sickle cell disease, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Bone marrow transplants used to be limited to just those people with sickle cell disease who could receive bone marrow from a matched donor. Rick Jones, an expert in blood disorders and cancers at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues have just published results from a series of patients in whom use of a specific medicine allows the donor group to be expanded.

Jones: Cyclophosphamide allows us to do half matched transplants, meaning most family members as well as mismatched unrelated transplants, initially for blood cancers like leukemia but almost 20 years ago we started doing it or sickle cell anemia. You were left with 40% of patients losing their graft. We came up with a regimen that maintains the safety of the transplant, now allows nearly 100% of people in our series to be fully engrafted and cured of their sickle cell anemia.            :31

Jones says the majority of people with sickle cell do have a half-matched person from whom they can receive bone marrow. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.