[Greg H]

Hey Karen!

The webcasts and podcasts I've listened to and the articles I have read give me the same impression: there's a real diversity of opinion about marrow vs. peripheral blood stem cells, as well as about the myeloablative vs. reduced intensity conditioning.

It seems like reduced intensity and peripheral blood stem cells kind of go together, because, with the reduced conditioning, they are actually depending on some GVHD to mop up the baddies in your marrow. With the full-blown conditioning, they are going to take care of that job with the chemo.

My transplant center (Wake Forest) is very RIC oriented, near as I can tell, though my doc did some training at Stanford, where they apparently use a tougher conditioning regimen for MDS than for some of the leukemias, because, as she says "The clone is stubborn." If I wanted to press it, I could probably get them to do a regular-intensity transplant for me, even though they usually cut those off at 50.

But the alphabet soup beside my cytogenetics is a little less impressive than yours, so I'm still INT-1 and looking hard at the NIH Campath trial, since I fit their profile. I've got a bunch of loose ends to tie up before I'm ready to devote the amount of time transplant takes, so I'm hoping I could use immunosuppression to buy a year or three. (My doc would turn five shades of purple and steam would come out of her ears if she read that sentence!)

From the reading, listening, and watching I've done, it seems like the guys and gals at Hopkins are real innovators, so I am sure you are going to be in very good hands there. Good luck on your donor search!

Greg