Risk of graft-vs.-host disease, an often-debilitating and sometimes-deadly bone marrow transplant complication, can be reduced by matching key immune genes in a transplant recipient and their donor.
But new work in mouse transplant models from Fred Hutch Cancer Center scientists suggests that researchers seeking new GVHD-tempering strategies should cast an even wider net.
“The key finding was that we shouldn’t just take into account the host-recipient genetics, we should take into account microbiome genetics as well,” said Fred Hutch medical oncologist Albert Yeh, MD, who led the study, published today in Immunity.
