Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation in multiple sclerosis: a review of the clinical experience and a report of an international meeting.

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), both allogeneic and autologous, has become one of the hottest topics in clinical immunology. One of the main autoimmune diseases in which HSCT has been extensively tried during the last decade is multiple sclerosis (MS). A few original papers and many anecdotal reports have indicated a beneficial effect of this treatment in MS, leading to stabilization or improvement in a large proportion of the treated patients. However, although hundreds of MS patients have been treated with HSCT, different conditioning and treatment protocols have been used in each center, making it difficult to organize and summarize the results from all of these small studies. Moreover, there is currently no completed controlled study with HSCT in MS. In this review, the cumulative experiences from several centers and countries in the world are summarized, based on the data presented at a recent international meeting in Moscow, Russia, entitled 'Stem Cell Transplantation in Multiple Sclerosis: Sharing the Experience'.