Recent advances in stem cell therapy for myelodysplastic syndromes

Many reports have emphasized the potential of stem/progenitor cells as intervention strategy to repair damaged tissue, providing new hope for the treatment of various diseases and conditions previously intractable like myelodysplastic syndromes, clonal hematopoietic disorders where blood-forming cells are damaged in the bone marrow. Early experimental evidence and growing clinical evidence strongly suggest that transplantation of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cells can repair the bone marrow and even cure myelodysplastic syndromes, with a reduced risk of rejection and manageable side effects. These findings have opened new avenues for cell-based cancer therapies, which have been providing very encouraging results in myelodysplastic syndromes and a number of blood cancers. However, though relatively minimal toxicity is reported in young adult patients, allogeneic stem cell transplantation still associates with life threatening undesired effects in pediatric and senior patients. In addition, a considerable fraction of these patients may also develop graft-versus-host disease. Recent advances in allogeneic stem cell transplantation in myelodysplastic syndrome as therapeutic strategy are herein briefly discussed, as well as newly proposed strategies to overcome the drawbacks of this technique.