The Nation : Marrow Transplant Advance Reported

Scientists have triggered disease-fighting defenses in bone marrow transplant recipients with an experimental procedure, a scientist told science writers at a seminar sponsored by the American Cancer Society in Daytona Beach, Fla. The immune system defenses of recipients were raised against poisons that are produced by tetanus and diphtheria bacteria, showing they benefited from vaccines given to marrow donors a week before the marrow was harvested, Albert Donnenberg of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said. Those diseases are not particular problems in marrow recipients, but the experiment suggests that a similar process might one day protect against potentially lethal fungous and viral infections that do appear in recipients, he said. Recipients had to be immunized within 35 days of their marrow transplants, or else the transferred immunity was lost, he said.