Abstract
Bone marrow transplantation (BMT) has been increasingly and successfully applied to the treatment of children with potentially fatal leukemias, aplastic anemia, congenital immunodeficiencies, and some forms of inborn metabolic error. Current indications of allogeneic or autologous BMT, recent advances in this treatment, and unsolved problems are reviewed in this article. The biggest difficulty that we are facing is the lack of HLA-identical sibling donors in otherwise eligible patients. Several possible solutions in future may include allogeneic BMT from unrelated histocompatible volunteer donors, autologous transplantation using (un) purged bone marrow, peripheral blood stem cells or in vitro expanded pluripotential stem cells, and gene therapy.
