bone marrow cells

(crown) the nih clinical center treated itsfirst study participant with bone marrow stromal cells, which researchers believe may helpto regulate the patient’s immune system. dr. david stroncek, chief of the departmentof transfusion medicine’s cell processing section. (stroncek)we’ve been working onthis project with my lab, and with clinical investigators at the nih and with laboratoryresearchers at the nih for over three years, both to develop the laboratory procedures,the good manufacturing procedures to grow these cells, and the clinical protocols totreat the patients. (crown)the study volunteer who received the bone marrow stromal cellsis currently enrolled in a protocol conducted by the national heart, lung and blood institute.the study volunteer has graft-versus-host

disease, a complication that can occur aftera stem cell or bone marrow transplant in which the donor immune system attacks the transplantrecipient's body. researchers hope the bone marrow stromal cells will suppress the patient’simmune system. healthy volunteers provided the cells for this study. the cell processingteam starts with a small amount of cells retrieved from a small bone marrow donation. the restare grown over a one-month period. (stroncek)we start with a small bone marrow aspirate thatreally has very few of these stromal cells and we culture them in small flasks. theygradually grow, and as they grow we have to transfer the culture into bigger and biggerflasks. finally, we start out with maybe a few flasks with maybe 100 milliliters of mediathat the cells are growing in. by the time

the 28 days are over, we have eight very largeflasks, which are called cell factories, with about 10 liters of media. so the cells haveexpanded thousands- fold. (crown)the study will include giving patients a series of threetransfusions throughout a three-week period. while research investigators hope to learnmore about bone marrow stromal cells, the transfusion medicine experts will learn moreabout the characteristics of the cells and the best processing methods. (stroncek) shouldwe give them more often than three times? should we give them a higher cell dose? wealso think there is going to be some variability in the cells with a lot of the cells we use.so we want to try to figure out what the characteristics of the cells that we give are the most important.then what we would like to do then is to modify

the way we give cells down the line, so wecan make the best possible cell that is the most effective in treating patients. (crown)from america's clinical research hospital, this has been clinical center radio. in bethesda,maryland, i'm ellen crown, at the national institutes of health, an agency of the unitedstates department of health and human services.