Research Question

[sparrow015]

So I'm working on this one fic where the character has cancer: Leukemia. Now I am still researching this and looking things up, but I figured I'd also ask my flist, 'cause you guys rock. :D

Now, the question is with remission in Leukemia I know chemotherapy is invovled, but what about the bone marrow that you can get donations from other people? Do they inject the healthy compatable bone marrow right away or do they wait until the chemo treatments are done and then add the marrow?

Comments

[akire-yta.livejournal.com]

chemo then marrow. chemo kills quite literally everything, so if they injected the healthy marrow before chemo was done, the chemo would just kill it too.

[sparrowsverse.livejournal.com]

u rock. :D

Also, before lj went boom, I sent you a msg via inbox, did you get that?

[akire-yta.livejournal.com]

i think so - inbox tends to fuck up my email so i can't be sure

[sparrowsverse.livejournal.com]

kk, let me know what you thought about the idea. :) If it's not there, I'll resend it. /o/

[daroos.livejournal.com]

From a completely non-experiential standpoint, but from a scientific standpoint, it is my understand that they:

1. Ablate hematopoetic stem cells (ie, kill all blood-cell generating cells in the marrow)
2. Wait a few days to make sure they're good and dead.
3. Repopulate bone marrow with new hematopoetic stem cells

From what I understand, current methods involve radiation to kill the cells, but as of a talk I went to last week, they're working on developing a combined chemical/low-dose radiation treatment which would theoretically put patients at less risk/discomfort. Regardless, the method would be the same.

[sparrowsverse.livejournal.com]

*tacklepouncerolldipsmooch* roos! <3!!! Thank you!

How long would the chemo treatment last? 6 weeks? 8 weeks? Cause I am going by google/medical journals I am able to dig up and tv.

[daroos.livejournal.com]

Um, on that front I am not sure. Again, according to the talk I went to last week, in mice the regime for combo chemo/chemicals involved one dose of meds (I think injected) and then a short (like, 1 week, in the case of mice) round of chemo, four days off of everything and then repopulation with stem cells.

Med journals are probably a reasonably good source - if you find a paper you'd like me to get the full text to which you can't access 'cause it wants you to pay, let me know and I can get a PDF from the school networks for free.

[daroos.livejournal.com]

Oh - other random thing is I think that some therapies are now trying to repopulate a person with their own non-cancerous stem cells, if they can't find a match.

[sparrowsverse.livejournal.com]

Hmm, good to know, but I probably want to keep this as simple as possible without over crowding the fic with technical details, but enough so people understand what's going on with the treatments and bone marrow donation.

*makes hand motions* I <3 u! Thanks muchly roos! *squishes u* :D