Bengaluru: As we head closer to the World Marrow Donor Day, Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre at Narayana Health City – one of the leading Blood and Marrow Stem Cell Transplant units in India highlights alarming cases of two Cambodian sisters aged 9 and 11 years; their hero and savior being an 11-month-old sibling and half HLA matched father. With Bone Marrow Transplant being the only cure for Thalassemia, it becomes very important to find a matching donor for such treatment.
Dr. Sunil Bhat, Head Paediatric Oncology informed, “It is highly unlikely to find an unrelated donor for Cambodian descent patients as there is no Cambodian donor registry and a number of Cambodian donors in other registries are almost negligible”.
“Chances of a match with other ethnic backgrounds is extremely low”, he added.
Fortunately, almost eight years after the second child was born, the family was blessed with a baby boy who was normal and did not suffer from Thalassemia.
The family began their search for a center with immense experience in pediatric bone marrow transplants. Their research led to Narayana Health City in Bengaluru and Dr. Sunil Bhat who has remarkable experience in treating complex cases of blood disorders in children. The center is also known for its innovative techniques in Haploidentical (half-matched) bone marrow transplants.
The younger sister was fortunate as her brother was the HLA match who could donate, but he was only 11 months old. Extracting marrow stem cells from a donor who is an infant was a clinical challenge.
The team at Narayana Health City came up with an innovative plan of taking the bone marrow from the donor at two different time points, around 4 to 6 weeks apart, in order to have adequate marrow for transplant. The transplant was performed in March this year making the 11-month-old infant the youngest donor to have donated bone marrow for his sister. The girl is completely cured of Thalassemia now.
However, her elder sister was not so lucky as she couldn’t get a fully matched donor. Therefore, her transplant was even more challenging. She did not have any HLA matched donor either in the family or anywhere in the World. The next possibility was a Haplo-identical transplant.
Doctors at Mazumdar Shaw Cancer Centre at Narayana Health City decided to use the stem cells of the father who was a half match with the elder daughter. A new technique was used in haplo (half-matched) transplant as the donor stem cells were not fully matching the patient. “Her bad cells were taken out in a procedure called TCR alpha-beta depletion and only the good cells were given to the patient”, explained Dr. Sunil Bhat.
“This avoids the risk of donor cells attacking the patient’s body”, he added. The transplant using this technique was performed on the elder girl in June this year and she is also cured of her disease completely.
