For the fifth year in a row, the Fred Hutch Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Seattle Cancer Care Alliance has been recognized by the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research as exceeding expectations for one-year survival rates. These survival rates specifically pertain to patients who have received transplants of blood-forming stem cells from healthy donors, a procedure pioneered at Fred Hutch.

The Fred Hutch/SCCA program was one of 13 centers around the country to receive this top evaluation and one of only six that has exceeded expectations for at least five years in a row. The annual CIBMTR report, issued Dec. 14, included nearly 24,000 allogeneic transplants performed from 2013 through 2015 at 174 transplant centers around the nation.

Scientists at the Hutch continue to make strides in improving the procedure. In addition to reducing transplant-specific complications such as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a complication that affects up to 80 percent of patients, further research at the Hutch is aimed at reducing the risk of disease relapse after transplant.

These scientific advances give hope for patients as they grapple with treatment choices.

Read the full article by Molly McElroy about this transplant program from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center