SCD cure rate hits 95% with new stem cell transplant procedure

Fertility also improved, with 2 successful pregnancies after treatment: Study

Nearly every person with sickle cell disease (SCD) who underwent a new regimen for stem cell transplant, developed by doctors at Johns Hopkins in the U.S., is alive and has been free of disease activity in the years following the procedure, a study reports.

“The survival rate in the long run in our study was about 95%, so we are curing the overwhelming majority of people who are transplanted, with mismatched donors,” Javier Bolaños-Meade, MD, the study’s senior author at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said in a university news story detailing the findings. The researchers noted that more than 80% of the patients in the small study “had a half-matched donor such as a parent, child or sibling.”