Posted on April 11, 2001 at 9:45 a.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) started its current bone marrow transplant (BMT) program in 1991 so people in Alabama and surrounding states would not have to travel across the country to receive this potentially life-saving procedure. “The enormous investment made in this sophisticated treatment and the people to operate it has now matured into one of the very few centers in the region that can provide the full range of such transplants for children and adults,” according to Dr. William Vaughan.

Vaughan has been director of the UAB BMT program for the past decade. His program recently performed bone marrow transplantation on its 700th patient. Clyde Speegle, 50, of Brushy Creek community in Cullman County, was the landmark patient. He is expected to be discharged from UAB Hospital today.

“Mr. Speegle had the most common type of procedure, called an autologous transplant, in which special “stem cells” are harvested from his circulating blood and later returned to him,” said Vaughan. “We are also certified to perform all other types of transplants, including those from a family member whether they are tissue-matched or even only partially matched. We also transplant from unrelated donors, including those matched through the national bone marrow donation program. In addition, we have performed 10 transplants from umbilical cord blood.”

Vaughan said some full-service BMT centers in the South have struggled in recent years, but UAB has continued to add to its repertoire of research and treatments.

“One of the most exciting areas we have been working in is ‘mini-transplants.’ This is an effort to take advantage of recent discoveries that providing simple blood donations from the donor provides a boost to the immune system of the patient who had previously received bone marrow from that person,” he said.

“With this capability in reserve, we are seeing that we may not always have to give so much chemotherapy on the front end. UAB is heavily involved developing ways to determine the optimal dose of chemotherapy in these patients,” The doctor said.

Vaughan also believes BMT for metastatic breast cancer eventually may come back into favor. The treatment fell out of favor following some studies that showed it to be no more effective than other treatments. “That short-term data caused many programs to react against BMT for breast cancer treatment, but longer-term data area now available shows more favorable outcome treatment for these patients who undergo BMT,” he said.

The hematologist-oncologist recently was elected chairman of the board of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, a consortium of major cancer centers.

* denotes bone marrow transplants through March 31, 2001.