Death-inducing proteins key to complications of bone marrow transplantation
Treatment for a number of cancers and other medical conditions is transplantation with bone marrow from a genetically nonidentical individual (a process known as allogeneic bone marrow transplantation [allo-BMT]). The treatment often causes an extended period of immune deficiency, resulting in susceptibility to infections and recurrence of cancers. Damage to the thymus (the part of the body where immune cells known as T cells develop) elicited by T cells from the donor bone marrow (a medical condition known as thymic GVHD [tGVHD]) contributes to the deficit in T cell immunity. Using mouse models of allo-BMT, Marcel van den Brink and colleagues, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre, New York, have now identified several of the molecules required by donor-derived T cells to mediate tGVHD, some of which might prove good drug targets to improve the outcome of allo-BMT...