Allogeneic stem cell transplantation for medulloblastoma

Medulloblastoma is a brain cancer that  is treated primarily with surgical excision followed by radiation therapy and chemotherapy. When there is spinal extension, craniospinal(brain and spine) radiation is standard.

Inoperable medulloblastomas are often treated with chemotherapy but there is no randomized prospective evidence to support this. This is especially so in adults, in whom this disease is less common than in children and in whom it appears to behave distinctly differently. 30% of medulloblastoma cases occur in adults.

Autologous transplantation of relapsed disease has support from case reports, case series and small prospective trials. What to do if the disease returns after an autologous transplant? We don’t know. There are but a few case reports of allogeneic transplantation for medulloblastoma, some of them from the older literature. I am not aware of any cases of allogeneic stem cell being used after failure of autologous stem cell transplantation that have been reported.

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