Summary
- Rhabdomyosarcoma (RMS)
Accounts for 50% of soft tissue sarcomas in the pediatric age group. The estimated average annual incident rate is 4.3 cases per million children, 2/3 are less than 6 years old and the remaining third are adolescents. It is slightly more frequent in males1.
- The mother as a potential source of transplantable stem cellsBidirectional passage of cells through the placenta and the persistence of this cells postnatally (feto-maternal microchimerism) is a well described phenomenon1-4, as well as the potential for this to translate in a long-lasting tollerance allowing the transplant of stem cells form mother to offspring and viceversa5-9. In this setting a GvM effect has also been observed10-12.
The use of the mother as stem cell donor has the potential advantage of not requiring costly cell purification procedures that are generally employed in the context of partially matched family donor transplantation (e.g. T-cell depletion through magnetic cell-sorting). Moreover, this type of study may extend this life-saving procedure to countries with ethnic groups less represented in international donor registries and/or stringent economical limitations.
