UCLA Improves Removal of Cancer Cells From Bone Marrow : Science File / An exploration of issues and trends affecting science, medicine and the environment.

Researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center have developed a new way to perform bone marrow transplants that can improve the odds of surviving multiple myeloma, a malignant blood disease that strikes 12,500 Americans each year, killing 10,000.

Conventional chemotherapy has only a short-term effect in myeloma, so some clinicians have begun using autologous transplants, in which physicians remove bone marrow stem cells--the source of all other blood cells--from the patient, kill all the cancerous and healthy blood cells with chemotherapy, and then reinfuse the stem cells to replenish the blood.

The problem is that cancer cells are often returned with the stem cells. Dr. James Berenson and his colleagues report in the journal Blood that they have improved the technique by devising a more effective way to remove the cancer cells.

-- Compiled from Times wire and staff reports.