A test developed in Dublin which helps to monitor bone-marrow transplant patients is now being used in hospitals throughout the world. The test uses patient and donor DNA and assesses how a patient is performing.
"It gives us a very early way to determine what is going on," said Dr Mark Lawler, lecturer in molecular haematology at St James's Hospital and Trinity College Dublin. The test, which can produce results within a day, gives an early indication of patient rejection or if the disease being treated by bone-marrow transplant is returning.
Bone-marrow transplants are used to treat leukaemia. The patient's marrow is destroyed and replaced by healthy marrow from a donor, which then takes over and begins producing healthy blood cells.
The test developed by Dr Lawler and colleagues in the early 1990s is based on producing DNA profiles from patient and donor before the transplant. These can then be used to determine whose marrow is functioning after the transplant.
If the patient's marrow is starting to dominate then further treatments can be given to support the donor marrow. If the patient is beginning to reject the marrow then more immunosuppressive drugs can be given. "It is essentially giving us a second chance," Dr Lawler said.
The test was perfected by 1996 and the college made the technology freely available to transplant centres throughout the world, he said. "We felt it was more important to disseminate the technology and help more patients." It is being used in the largest bone-marrow transplant unit in the world, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Centre in Seattle, Washington.
Dr Lawler described it as a good example of how basic research can translate from the bench and the lab into treatments and techniques applied in the clinic.