Pediatric Bone Marrow Transplant in Israel

This unit is part of the Pediatric Hemato-Oncology Department and consists of four private procedure rooms with advanced infection controls, including HEPA air filtration.

Around 25 pediatric transplants are conducted annually on patients suffering from a variety of oncologic and hematologic conditions.

Autologous transplants, or transplants taken from the patient’s own stem cells, are used for child patients with solid tumors. These are usually sourced from peripheral blood, which is then frozen and preserved. Naturally, this type of transplant does not require an outside donor.

Allogenic transplants are performed with donor tissue from a genetically suitable family member. These are performed to treat conditions such as leukemia, metabolic diseases, immunodeficiencies, and other hematologic issues. In the event that a family member is not a full match, cutting edge techniques like T-cell depletion and CD34 positive selection are employed.

If no suitable related donor exists, stem cells from the National Marrow Donor Program may be used. Sheba Medical Center is a full member of this program. Furthermore, we utilize a cutting edge human leukocyte antigen (HLA) laboratory to assist in the search for donors.

The HLA laboratory can conduct high-resolution DNA testing and, along with our molecular laboratory, greatly aids in bone marrow evaluation for suitability.

Sheba Medical Center also makes regular reports to the International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry (IBMTR) and to the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) on our bone marrow transplantation results.

We are pleased to report that we recently successfully performed a cord blood transplantation to a child with Fanconi’s anemia, a disease in which the production of all blood cell types is decreased. The source of the cord blood was a newborn, where PCR was used to confirm HLA compatibility and to ensure no disease was present.