Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Treatment of Therapy-Resistant Graft-versus-Host Disease

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have immunomodulatory effects. The aim was to study the effect of MSC infusion on graft-versus-host disease (GVHD).

We gave MSC to eight patients with steroid-refractory grades III-IV GVHD and one who had extensive chronic GVHD. The MSC dose was median 1.0 (range 0.7 to 9)x10(6)/kg. No acute side-effects occurred after the MSC infusions. Six patients were treated once and three patients twice. Two patients received MSC from HLA-identical siblings, six from haplo-identical family donors and four from unrelated mismatched donors.