Less toxic conditioning regimen for bone marrow transplants using an existing drug

A team of researchers led by Tatsuo Kawai of Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Surgery, Harvard Medical School, Boston, has found a less-intensive way to promote bone marrow transfusion success. In their paper, “Selective Bcl-2 inhibition promotes hematopoietic chimerism and allograft tolerance without myelosuppression in nonhuman primates,” published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers detail how a currently FDA-approved drug for the treatment of chronic lymphocyte leukemia (CLL) can be used to make hematopoietic stem cell transplantation conditioning regimens less toxic.