A young woman beat leukemia; however, nine years later, she faced a different blood cancer. This rare twist, reported recently in Oncotarget, reveals an unexpected risk of bone marrow transplants and opens new questions about long-term outcomes and donor screening.
Bone Marrow Transplant
Bone marrow transplants, also known as hematopoietic stem cell transplants, are often lifesaving for patients with blood cancers like leukemia. These transplants replace a patient’s damaged bone marrow with healthy cells from a donor, giving the body a fresh start. While this treatment can be remarkably effective, it comes with complex risks. Relapse of the original cancer is the most feared outcome. But in very rare cases, a different threat emerges; a cancer formed from the donor’s cells. This condition, called donor cell–derived hematologic neoplasm (DCHN), occurs in less than 1% of cases, and it can emerge years after a transplant.
The Case Report
Dr. Aleksandra Mroczkowska-Bękarciak and Dr. Tomasz Wróbel from Wroclaw Medical University in Poland recently published a new DCHN case report, titled “A case report of donor cell–derived hematologic neoplasms 9 years after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation,” in Volume 16 of Oncotarget.
Full blog - https://www.oncotarget.org/2025/03/26/when-the-cure-becomes-the-cause-a-rare-case-of-cancer-from-donor-cells/
Paper DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28686
Correspondence to - Aleksandra Mroczkowska-Bękarciak - omroczkowska@interia.pl
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Keywords - cancer, hematology, donor cell-derived hematologic neoplasms, genetics
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