Finding a bone marrow donor can be a difficult but life-saving task, especially for minority patients, who are often less likely to find a compatible donor.
A biotechnology company, Bone Health is working to change that situation by turning to an unlikely source of donors: cadavers. This new approach could expand access for patients in need to bone marrow transplants.
A bone marrow transplant is often a last resort for patients with aggressive blood cancers, such as acute myeloid leukemia. Transplantation replaces the patient’s unhealthy bone marrow with healthy stem cells, but Finding a compatible cell is not easy.
To reduce complications, the stem cells must match the patient’s human leukocyte antigens. In the United States, for example, for black and African-American patients, the probability of finding a compatible donor through traditional donor registries is only 29%.
This is where Ossium Health comes into action. The company created a deceased donor bone marrow bankcollected in cooperation with organ donation organizations.
By cryopreserving these cells, Ossium aims to create a resource for patients who are unable to find compatible living donors, explains the magazine. The company recently provided bone marrow to a 68-year-old African-American woman from Michigan whose doctors were having difficulty finding a compatible donor.
Like the usual stem cell collection method, the relate to depends on blood flow, does not work well in deceased individuals. Ossium, however, has developed a technique to extract bone marrow from the spine, which is then preserved in liquid nitrogen at around -190°C. This pioneering approach allowed Ossium treat thousands of donors since its founding in 2016.
The use of deceased donors is an advantage for patients with urgent needs. Although traditional bone marrow registries can match living donors, the process is time-consuming. Ossium’s approach to storing preserved cells allows for a “out of the box” optiondrastically reducing the wait for patients with rapidly progressing diseases.
In June 2024, frozen Ossium cells were transplanted into a Michigan woman, and by September, her health was improving. This was the company’s first successful bone marrow transplant using cells from deceased donors.
The use of deceased donors can also benefit organ transplant patients who need to rely on lifelong immunosuppressive medications. According to Stanford University professor Robert Negrin, if these patients receive a marrow transplant from their organ donor, it could theoretically allow them to discontinue these medications.
However, this method has limitations. Freezing stem cells can sometimes reduce its effectivenesspotentially increasing the likelihood of cancer recurrence.
