More commonly called bone marrow transplants, a bone marrow or blood stem cell transplant is a potentially life-saving treatment for patients fighting blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma as well as other blood diseases like sickle cell. A transplant replaces the patient’s unhealthy blood stem cells with healthy ones from a donor. Prior to transplant, a patient undergoes high dosages of chemotherapy and possibly radiation therapy to destroy all the diseased cells in their body as well as their immune system so that it can’t attack the donated cells after transplant. During transplant, the donated cells are infused into the patient and move through the bloodstream into the bone marrow, where they begin to grow and produce new healthy blood cells in a process called engraftment.
