Bone marrow / stem cell transplantation Department

The department is equipped with 7 beds (4 for adults, 3 for children) and is provided with a special air cleaning system ensuring air sampling/laminar flow and HEPA filtration. The department has all the required technical equipment and all the necessary conditions for the treatment and care of patients for bone marrow/homeopathic stem cells/and autologous transplantation. The highly skilled team of transplantologists who have been trained abroad provide all the necessary treatment, under the leadership of Dr. Karen Meliksetyan.

At present the autologous transplantation of bone marrow/homeopathic stem cells is carried out in the department in case of adults’ malignant diseases particularly multiple myeloma, Hodgkin's, non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, as well as in case of adults and children's solid tumors, particularly neuroblastoma, Ewing's sarcoma and medulloblastoma.

On December 2016 the Armenian Group for Blood & Marrow Transplantation was formed:

  • Karen Meliksetyan-head of Bone Marrow Transplant Program
  • Ervand Hakobyan-adults’ hematologist
  • Miranush Saaryan-adults’ hematologist
  • Armine Farmazyan-adults’ hematologist
  • Lusine Krmoyan-head of pediatric hematologists
  • Inga Khalatyan-pediatric hematologist
  • Marina Avetisyan-head of nurses
  • Armine Pepanyan-head of Stem cells Laboratory
  • Andranik Shamilyan-doctor-transfusiologist, the head of Blood Components Storage Department

The specialists were trained in the following clinics:

  • “The University of Eppendorf”, Hamburg (Germany)
  • “Hematology and Blood Transfusion Center” (ÚHKT), (Czech Republic)
  • “Trinity St. James’s Cancer Institute”, Dublin (Ireland)
  • “Wilhelminenspital”, Vienna (Austria)
  • “University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center”(USA)
  • “Department of pediatric hematology and oncology, 2nd faculty of medicine, Charles university in Prague and Motol University hospital”, (Czech Republic)
  • “Hospital General Universitario Morales Meseguer”, Murcia (Spain)
  • “Dmitry Rogachev National Research center of pediatric hematology, oncology and immunology “(Russia)
  • Raisa Gorbacheva Memorial Research Institute for Pediatric Oncology, Hematology and Transplantation, St. Petersburg (Russia)

The department cooperates with the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation-EBMT, with the center of bone marrow transplantation headed by the Professor Dr. Nicolaus Kröger of the University of Eppendorf, Hamburg (UKE), and Germany.

On April 2017 the Armenian Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation started the autologous transplantation program. The bone marrow transplantation program will be implemented in two stages. First stage-autologous bone marrow transplantation of malignant blood diseases (myeloma/lymphoma) and solitary tumors: Second stage-bone marrow/stem cells allogeneic transplantation which will be implemented in future years.

First transplantation, which had no precedent in Armenian medicine, was done in April 2017. The collecting, evaluation, processing and freezing stages of stem cells were performed by the teams of S.Hovhannisyan-Blood and stem cells collecting service, A.Pepanyan-Stem cells laboratory, by specialists E.Babenko and D. Pevtsov from Raisa Gorbacheva Memorial Research Institute for Pediatric Oncology, Hematology and Transplantation.

The bone marrow autologous transplantation of two patients with multiple myeloma was carried out by Armenian Group for Blood & Marrow Transplantation under the leadership of Karen Meliksetyan and by Professor Dr. Nicolaus Kröger. Successful 4 autologous transplantations were carried out during the first working year.

In July 2021 first Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation has been performed at the Hematology center after prof.R.H.Yeolyan.

On July 7 first Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation has been performed with the international cooperation support of Cure2Children charitable foundation, Italian famous specialist Lawrence Faulkner and the Armenian Group for Blood & Marrow Transplantation/ArmBMT/, particularly Lusine Krmoyan-head of pediatric Blood & Marrow Transplantation group, pediatrician Mane Gizhlaryan and Karen Meliksetyan-head of Bone Marrow Transplant Program. The first patient is a girl of 5 from Nigeria with sickle cell anemia whose donor is her twin sister, and the second patient is a girl of 1.8 from Kameron whose donor is her brother.