Haematology Research

Haemopoietic stem cell transplantation is a procedure that repairs the bone marrow with stem cells that are either the patient’s own (autologous) or from a matched donor (allogeneic). The most common reason for transplantation is to treat blood and lymph cancers and is often the only curative option available.

In the early 1980s, all bone marrow transplantations were performed using bone marrow cells and it was a procedure that involved 5 weeks in hospital because the graft would take up to 3 weeks to function and the risk of death undergoing a transplantation was at least 20%. The Haematology Group discovered that stem cells could be mobilised from the bone marrow into the peripheral blood by chemotherapy or growth factors. The number of stem cells that could be collected from the blood after such mobilisation is much higher than that collected from the bone marrow. When these mobilised cells were used for transplantation, the graft starts to function within 2 weeks. As a result, hospitalisation was shortened to three and a half weeks and the risk of death more than halved. The increased safety allowed transplantation to be offered to patients up to 70 years of age.

Now mobilised blood cells are used instead of bone marrow in 90% of autologous transplantation and 50% of allogeneic transplantations. The Haematology Research Group is acknowledged as a worldwide leader for the research leading to such a change.

Other world leading research activities within the Haematology Group focus on adult mesenchymal stem cells, multiple myeloma, chronic myeloid leukaemia and apoptosis/cellular regulation. These areas are described in more detail in the following sections of this site.