Feb. 4, 2013 Stanford University School of Medicine
investigators have identified a clutch of cells that -- if seen
in a male patient's blood after receiving a brand-new immune
system in the form of a bone-marrow transplant from a female
donor -- herald the onset of chronic graft-versus-host disease,
or cGVHD. In this devastating syndrome, the patient's tissues
come under a vicious and enduring assault by the transplanted
cells. "The overwhelming majority of patients who have these
cells in their blood either have or will develop cGVHD within
one to three months," said David Miklos, MD, PhD, assistant
professor of medicine and senior author of the new study, which
will be published online Feb. 4 in Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. Until now there have been no good
predictive indicators for the onset of cGVHD, he said. The
discovery of this easily measured marker in the blood could help
guide new therapies designed to mitigate or prevent cGVHD, the
primary adverse outcome of transplantation of