DOI: 10.1097/01.NT.0000349794.77745.25

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Issn Print: 1533-7006

Publication Date: 2009/03/19


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First Report of Donor-Derived Brain Tumor After Neural Stem Cell Transplant in Boy

JAMIE TALAN

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Excerpt

A young boy who received an experimental neural transplant in Russia was found to have tumors in his brain and spinal cord, which may have resulted from the transplanted donor cells.
A boy with a rare neurological disease — ataxia telangiectasia (AT) — whose family took him to Russia on three separate occasions for infusions of fetal neural stem cells with hopes of stalling or reversing his progressive disease was found to have cancerous growths in the brain and spinal cord, according to a report by Israeli investigators.
The Israeli team conducted genetic studies on the spinal tumor, which had been removed surgically, and found that DNA in the tumor cells could not be from the boy. In fact, the tumor contained both female (XX) and male (XY) cells and two normal copies of the ATM gene — borne of the fetal neural stem cells — showing the tumor cells belonged to at least two donors, a male and female, they reported in the Feb. 17 online publication, Public Library of Science Medicine.
“We are dealing with a tumor from the transplant,” said Gideon Rechavi, MD, PhD, a pediatric oncologist who heads the Sheba Cancer Research Center affiliated with Tel Aviv University Sackler School of Medicine. This is the first reported case of a donor-derived brain tumor following neural stem cell transplantation. But Dr. Rechavi and his colleagues said that the findings “do not imply that research in stem cell therapeutics should be abandoned.

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