Pitt Pediatrics congratulates Paul Szabolcs, MD for his recent first author publication in JCI Insight titled, “Durable hematopoiesis and tolerance after vertebral bone marrow transplant from a deceased lung transplant donor.” Szabolcs is a Professor of Pediatrics and Immunology as well as the Director of our Division of Blood and Marrow Transplantation and Cellular Therapies (BMT).
This important research was conducted across several departments within the Department of Pediatrics and University of Pittsburgh, including work from Xiaohua Chen, MD, PhD (BMT), Marian Michaels, MD, MPH (Infectious Disease), Memphis Hill (BMT), Evelyn Garchar, MS (BMT), Zarreen Amin (BMT), Heather Stanczak (BMT and Hematopoietic Stem Cell Laboratories, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh), Shawna McIntyre (BMT), Dhivyaa Rajasundaram, PhD (Health Informatics), Ansuman Chattopadhyay, PhD (Molecular Biology Information Service, Health Sciences Library System), Jonathon Spahr, MD (Pulmonary Medicine), and Geoffrey Kurland, MD (Pulmonary Medicine). Other researchers contributed from outside institutions, such as the University of Washington-Seattle Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando, Florida.
Together, the research team hypothesized that bone marrow transplantation (BMT) using marrow extracted from the vertebral bodies (VBs) of an unrelated deceased lung transplant donor would be able to establish persistent hematopoiesis and generate immunity and tolerance. Specifically, the team looked to a teenager suffering from severe combined immunodeficiency who received a lung transplant in 2016. A few months later, the teenager received a BMT from an unrelated donor using cryopreserved VB marrow.
Six months later, the patient experienced accelerating immune competence, with independence from immunosuppression by 16 months. In the nine following years the vast majority of the patient’s T cells continued to come from the donor, however, inherent T cells became tolerant of the transplant.
Nine years following transplantation, the case demonstrates that, for the first time to the researcher team's knowledge, durable hematopoietic engraftment, immunity, and tolerance were demonstrable in a recipient of BMT obtained from a VB graft. Or, in other words, a BMT actively rebuilt a patient’s immune system following an organ transplant and aided the body in accepting the transplant without ongoing immunosuppressive treatment.
This exciting conclusion indicates enormous potential for BMT to aid in transplant patients’ recovery and lifelong care. Join us in congratulating and promoting this fantastic work by Dr. Szabolcs and his research lab and collaborative team.
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