A young woman from Sacramento named Jessie Quinn found herself with a puzzling array of health symptoms in 2010, including unexplained weight loss, eye problems and pelvic pain.  After going to the emergency room, she was diagnosed as having acute myeloid leukaemia — a very aggressive form of cancer that spreads quickly.

Doctors informed Jessie that normal chemotherapy treatments would not be enough, she would require very intense chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant.  Jessie has a background in science, so she understood the potential difficulties involved in finding a bone marrow match.  Because she was mixed-race, it would be even harder to find a suitable match in the bone marrow registry.

When doctors checked the bone marrow registry for a match, only one name appeared — her own!

Jessie began her chemotherapy without having a suitable stem cell donor available.  Doctors suggested that an experimental umbilical cord stem cell transplant might be the only way she could survive.

In the past two decades, researchers have realised that umbilical cords are a very source of stem cells for treating leukaemia.  Because the cells in umbilical cords are less developed than cells in bone marrow, it is easier to find a matching donor.  Researchers have developed techniques that make a stem cell transplant viable even when there is not a perfect match between donor and recipient.

Jessie successfully received the umbilical cord stem cell transplant and her cancer has gone into remission!

Dr. Colleen Delanney from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre was heavily involved in developing the treatment that was used to cure Jessie’s cancer.  Being able to treat cancer patients with umbilical cord stem cells that are only a partial match has revolutionised cancer treatment!

Source: There’s new hope for blood cancers, and it comes from umbilical cords

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