Bone Marrow is the spongy tissue inside your bones. Bone marrow produces new blood cells- red blood cells, platelets, and white blood cells. While blood samples can show much information about the body, diseases of the blood are often diagnosed by studying a sample of bone marrow. In the stroma of the bone marrow are stem cells that can grow into different types of cells.
What Are Stem Cells?
Stem cells are the most undeveloped of all the cells in the body. They are remarkable because they have the ability to develop into any of the more than 200 cell types in the human body, and once developed, they can produce more cells like themselves. Stem cells are central to the body's ability to heal after injury, and to renew itself as old cells die (such as in the skin, which is constantly in the process of sloughing off dead cells and making new ones below the surface.)
How Does Bone Marrow Transplantation Work?
Simply put, stem cells are taken from the bone marrow of either the patient or a donor, and then the patient's bone marrow is “killed” using radiation. Then the healthy stem cells are reintroduced to the bone, to develop into bone marrow. When successful, the new bone marrow builds a healthy blood system.
Bone Marrow Transplantation at Hadassah
Hadassah is at the forefront of bone marrow and stem cell transplantation, and has pioneered many of the techniques used throughout the world today.
