Michigan woman one of first in world to successfully receive bone marrow from deceased donor

DETROIT – A Michigan woman with leukemia is one of the first people in the world to successfully receive a bone marrow transplant from a deceased human donor.

The patient is a 68-year-old African American woman from Flint. Henry Ford Health said her case may play a key role in helping thousands of people in the United States who are diagnosed each year with blood cancers and depend on stem cell transplants to save their lives.

“For patients with leukemia, lymphoma, sickle cell anemia, and other life-threatening diseases, stem cell transplant is often the best chance for recovery,” said Dr. Muneer Abidi, who led the transplant team that performed the procedure at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. “Unfortunately, particularly for minority patients, living donors are very difficult to identify.”

During a bone marrow transplant, doctors infuse healthy blood-forming stem cells into a patient’s body to replace bone marrow that’s not producing enough healthy blood cells. The inability to find a matching bone marrow donor prevents many patients from getting this life-saving treatment.

According to Henry Ford, 70% of patients who need a transplant don’t have a donor match in their family. Depending on their ethnic background, the chance of finding a match through the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) is between 29% and 79%. Black patients have a 29% chance of finding a match. Up to 45% of people seeking a transplant do not receive one in time.

“The ability to transplant bone marrow from a deceased donor presents a whole new set of opportunities for our patients,” said Dr. Abidi, who serves as medical director for stem cell transplant and cellular therapy and director of the stem cell laboratory at Henry Ford Health.

In the Flint woman’s case, she was undergoing chemotherapy that would not cure her leukemia. Doctors agreed that a bone marrow transplant was her best chance of survival. According to Dr. Josephine N. Emole, the Henry Ford Health Stem Cell transplant physician, she has accepted the new bone marrow and blood tests are good.

“She has just started the journey towards her cure and the outlook is encouraging,” Dr. Emole said. “I consider it a great honor to be entrusted daily with the care of all patients that come to our stem cell transplant program. For this patient, it feels particularly rewarding to see that the hard work by our team to provide both routine and innovative care have yielded such significant results.”

The deceased donor cells were made available through the HOPE compassionate program – an initiative by Ossium Health that gives patients around the world access to Ossium’s bone marrow. Henry Ford also is working with Ossium and NMDP on opening a Phase I/II clinical trial at Henry Ford Health.

Ossium Health removes bone marrow from a deceased organ donor’s spine. The bone marrow is cryogenically preserved at a laboratory in Indianapolis where it is available for immediate shipment and transplant.

“This trial is mainly intended for patients who are in urgent need of a transplant, or the team is unable to find a match donor. Both were true in the case of our patient. The deceased bone marrow was the only option for her at that point,” Dr. Abidi said.