On June 5, 2023, Catherine (pseudonym), a British patient, was successfully discharged from the Jiahui International Cancer Center after receiving autologous peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transfusion, and will soon embark on a trip back to the UK from the hospital. She is also the first patient to complete this treatment at Jiahui International Hospital.

Catherine was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma in the UK in 2019, when the disease went into complete remission after first-line treatment. At that time, she was not yet 30 years old. Two years later, while living and working in China, she visited Jiahui International Hospital with multiple enlarged lymph nodes. Unfortunately, a pathology biopsy confirmed "Hodgkin's lymphoma recurrence" and Catherine again managed to achieve complete remission with second-line treatment combined with targeted drugs. Fortunately, she went into a third remission after Immunotherapy and targeted therapies

However, for such a young patient with hematological tumors, it is foreseeable that the plateau period of disease remission will become shorter and shorter, and treatment will become more and more difficult. The patient had an indication for autologous peripheral blood stem cell transplantation for consolidation, and the treatment could improve the long-term outcome of the patient with benefits that could not be replaced by other treatments. So, the collection and transfusion of autologous blood stem cells was put on the agenda by her primary care physician, Dr. Lily Zhou, and all the departments of the Jiahui worked together to quickly start the preparations for the project.

Accompanying through more than ten days of ‘solitary time’

Through multidisciplinary discussions and in conjunction with the patient's condition, the hematology and oncology team at Jiahui decided to perform autologous peripheral blood stem cell therapy for her as soon as possible. Dr. Vicky Lee, Deputy Director of the Jiahui International Cancer Center and Chief of Medical Oncology, quickly organized a pre-treatment general case discussion, made adequate preparations, and formulated a treatment plan and schedule. After preparations such as hematopoietic stem cell mobilization and collection, Catherine was admitted to a special laminar flow clean room sterile warehouse.

Only three months later, the disease deteriorated once again. Although the patient was young, with years of previous lymphoma with bone marrow involvement and after multiple lines of treatment, stem cell collection was not easy. In order to ensure the collection quantity, the Jiahui hematology-oncology team made sufficient preparation and successfully mobilized and collected enough peripheral blood stem cells on April 25. After achieving maximum efficacy through chemotherapy combined with targeting therapy, the patient was successfully admitted to the warehouse to start receiving high-dose chemotherapy combined with autologous stem cell transfusion treatment.

Although the sterile warehouse of the laminar flow ward ensured a safe environment, the loneliness of living in a separate and closed sterile warehouse without the close company of relatives and friends in a foreign country made her depressed. In order to encourage her, the medical staff would visit her every day in the laminar flow ward "in full armor" and chat with her; knowing that she likes animals, they also shared videos of her pets at home to keep her happy and positive. Dr. Vicky Lee and Dr. Lily Zhou paid close attention to her vital signs and emotional changes every day, making timely adjustments and treating symptoms; the nursing team also adopted a 12-hour shift system and dedicated one-on-one care to help her get through the discomfort of chemotherapy, the difficulty of bone marrow suppression and the risk of blood indicator recovery period.

Under the careful care of the Jiahui hematology oncology team, the whole treatment process went very smoothly. Just 10 days after the transfusion, Catherine's blood picture recovered and she was discharged from the warehouse smoothly

New therapies continue to land in Jiahui

At present, autologous hematopoietic stem cell therapy has been widely carried out worldwide, while the overall percentage of this therapy in China is low. It is a cutting-edge medical tool that uses the powerful differentiation and renewal ability of hematopoietic stem cells to save patients' lives. It refers to the treatment of hematopoietic diseases such as multiple myeloma, malignant lymphoma, some leukemias and plasma cell diseases by infusing autologous hematopoietic stem cells into the body via blood vessels after the patients have been pretreated with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and new drugs to rebuild the normal hematopoietic and immune systems.

Autologous peripheral blood stem cell collection, freezing, resuscitation, transfusion, pre-transplant preparation, patient assessment, examination plan, pretreatment protocol, quality control and care, each step is very important and requires close cooperation of the whole team. Nowadays, Jiahui International Cancer Center has built a high-level clinical team for hematology and oncology, and has made great efforts in the development of standardized operation specifications and corresponding requirements for advanced therapies, rapid introduction of new drugs and technologies, and opening of laminar flow clean wards, etc. It has also formed in-depth cooperation with many comprehensive grade A tertiary hospitals in Shanghai to share high-quality medical resources.

The "Autologous Peripheral Blood Stem Cell Collection and Transfusion" service of Jiahui International Cancer Center is now officially put into clinical application. In the future, more cutting-edge therapies for hematologic tumors, including CAR-T, will be gradually implemented in Jiahui International Cancer Center to gain time and win the possibility of cure for hematologic tumor patients.

*The contents of this article are not intended to be used as a basis for clinical diagnosis or medical treatment, and any medical treatment should be in accordance with medical advice.