Chinese expert gives lecture on malignant blood diseases in Japan

Huang Xiaojun, a Chinese expert on blood diseases, gave a special lecture in Kobe on Friday, unveiling his team's advanced achievements in preventing and treating relapse of malignant blood disease.

Huang, head of the Institute of Hematology at Peking University, was invited to give a special lecture at the 37th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Hematopoietic Stem Transplantation, held in the Kobe International Conference Center from Thursday to Saturday.

Huang presented the audience a novel immunomodulatory strategy used by his team, which uses G-CSF-mobilized peripheral blood progenitor cells instead of static lymphocytes to treat patients, supplemented with six to eight weeks' short-term immunity dampening drugs.

This new strategy, according to Huang, could largely improve the survival rate of patients with recurrent malignant blood diseases, and reduce the relapse rate with the help of advanced monitoring methods.

The strategy has been systematically used since 2012. By the end of 2014, three-year disease-free survival rate for standard- risk leukemia patients in Huang's institute reached 68 percent, and that for high-risk leukemia patients reached 49 percent, both higher than world renowned transplant centers such as M.D. Anderson and Johns Hopkins University.

"Our strategy of preventing and treating relapse of malignant blood diseases is advanced in the world. Our next goal is to find out the cytological mechanism of the immunomodulatory strategy, and by doing that, we could not only cure malignant blood diseases better, but also make progress in immunological studies and contribute to human welfare." said Huang.