When it comes to fighting cancer, experience matters.
The John Theurer Cancer Center at Hackensack University Medical Center has been providing life-saving blood and marrow stem cell transplantation for more than 30 years.
The Adult Blood and Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation Program performs approximately 400 transplants a year — and has performed more than 8,000 since its inception, helping to make it one of the Top 10 bone marrow transplant programs in the country.
Dr. Michele Donato, chief of the stem cell transplantation and cellular therapy program at the center, said the center has been thrilled to play a key role. And she’s thrilled the program’s reach has continued to grow.
“Advances in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation have made this approach an option for more people with hematologic cancers and benign blood disorders, including older patients and those with more complex medical issues,” she said.
Donato listed a number of blood-related cancers that potentially could be treated with stem cell transplantation, including:
- Acute myelogenous and lymphoblastic leukemia
- Chronic myelogenous and lymphocytic leukemia
- Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma
- Multiple myeloma
Donato summed it up this way: “We offer all types of transplantations, from the autologous transplantation, where we use stem cells from the patient’s own body and which help recover from very-high-dose chemotherapy (as a form of rescue), to the allogenic transplantation, where stem cells are collected from a matching donor, such as a sibling or unrelated donors, and transplanted into the patient to create a new immune system that can prevent recurrence of the original disease such as lymphoma, myelodysplastic syndrome, leukemia or myeloma.”
The Adult Blood and Marrow Stem Cell Transplantation Program was accredited by the Foundation for the Accreditation of Cellular Therapy back in 1991.
It was just the second accredited transplant facility in the country — but the first in the U.S. to be recognized by the Joint Commission to receive Disease-Specific Care Certification for stem cell transplantation.
Donato said the experience of the team is key.
The team’s advanced practice nurses, case managers, nurse navigators, social workers, pharmacists and registered dieticians all specialize in the care of transplant patients. In fact, many nurses have certification in oncology and stem cell transplantation, she said.
“Our blood and marrow stem cell transplant team features doctors with decades of experience, including specialists who focus specifically on leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma,” she said.
“Our research has a strong focus on reducing the complications of transplant and also lowering the risk of disease recurrence.” — Dr. Michele Donato
The teams meet weekly to develop treatment plans for each patient.
Patients benefit in another way, as they may have the opportunity to participate in a clinical trial of new and exciting approaches to stem cell transplant.
“Our research has a strong focus on reducing the complications of transplant and also lowering the risk of disease recurrence,” Donato said. “We are the first in the world to combine checkpoint inhibitors (drugs that inhibit the proteins cancer cells use to evade detection by the immune system) after transplantation, at a time when the immune system has the best opportunity to eliminate any remaining cancer cells.”
For information about John Theurer Cancer Center, go to hackensackmeridianhealth.org.
