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Cedars-Sinai Again Earns Top Stem Cell Transplant Ranking

Tue, 20 Jan 2026 08:00:00 -0800

For the sixth consecutive year, Cedars-Sinai patients who receive donor stem cell transplants for blood cancers like leukemia have significantly better survival outcomes than patients treated at most other institutions.

These outcomes place the medical center at the top of rankings recently released by the Center for International Bone and Marrow Transplant Research (CIBMTR). Cedars-Sinai is one of just seven adult transplant centers out of 176 in the U.S. where patient survival after transplant is significantly better than predicted.

“We have a carefully chosen approach to pretransplant conditioning and graft-versus-host disease prevention for our patients, which plays a vital role in our strong survival outcomes,” said John Chute, MD, director of the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Cedars-Sinai Cancer. “We also have a dedicated system for keeping patients in touch with their care team, which helps identify problems before they become serious.”

The greatest risk to stem cell transplant patients is during the first 100 days after transplant, said Ronald Paquette, MD, clinical director of the Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai Cancer.

“We have modified our pretransplant regimens and post-transplant care to minimize toxicity to the patients and give them the best chance for a successful recovery,” Paquette said. “We also are careful to select stem cell donors who can provide the best-quality stem cell and immune cell recovery.”

An allogeneic transplant uses stem cells from a donor, rather than the patient’s own cells, and Paquette said the approaches to these transplants are specific to each institution.

Along with a uniform approach to pretransplant therapy, Chute and Paquette attributed Cedars-Sinai’s top ranking to the frequent use of younger half-matched donors—often a child or grandchild of the patient—to get patients to transplant more quickly.

“In addition to that, there is no replacement for the people who take care of the patients, from the transplant coordinators to the physicians, nurses and advanced practice providers,” Chute said. “The dedication of our team provides that crucial element that yields the best possible results for our patients.”

Chute and Paquette are currently exploring stem cell transplant for patients who would once have been thought “too old” for the procedure.

“Age 75 used to be the upper limit, but that was arbitrary,” Paquette said. “We have transplanted several patients over age 75 and all are doing well so far. We are hoping to learn more about the biology of transplant via these patients, to learn about the pluses and minuses of doing transplants in patients this age. We want to learn not only how to extend their survival but also how to maximize their quality of life.”

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Youngest Cedars-Sinai Stem Cell Donor Helps Doctors Treat Dad’s Leukemia

Tue, 16 Sep 2025 06:00:00 -0700

In July, Nick Mondek, MD, drove his healthy 9-year-old son Stephen to Cedars-Sinai on an important mission: To donate stem cells that might cure Mondek’s deadly blood cancer. Stephen’s donation would give Mondek a brand-new immune system—and make Stephen the hospital’s youngest-known stem cell donor.

“A donation from a child this young is very rare,” said Hoyoung Chung, DO, a critical care pediatrician at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s. “Stephen was very brave, and our team made sure everything went perfectly so that this young boy could help his father.”

Mondek, an anesthesiologist who works in the Los Angeles area, was first diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer that affects the blood-forming cells in the bone marrow, in 2022. A stem cell transplant from his brother, a perfect genetic match, sent him into remission, but Mondek’s cancer returned in April of this year.

“We followed every clinical protocol but the disease still managed to come back, so we had a new problem on our hands,” said Ronald Paquette, MD, clinical director of the Stem Cell and Bone Marrow Transplant Program at Cedars-Sinai Cancer. “How could we treat his cancer a second time around and have a better chance that it doesn’t return?”

The only chance was another stem cell transplant from a new donor. A search among Mondek’s relatives and in the National Bone Marrow Registry failed to turn up a match, but Mondek recalled a close friend with lymphoma who received a transplant from his 18-year-old son.

“How young could you go with a donor?” he asked Paquette.

Paquette confirmed that Stephen, who turned 10 in August, was a possibility. Children receive half of their DNA from each of their parents, so Stephen would be a half-match to Mondek. Stephen would still have to be tested to be sure that his immune system would be compatible with his father’s, but Paquette said that if it was, a half-match might make the transplant more effective. A half-matched immune system might more easily recognize and kill the cancer cells in Mondek’s bone marrow, and transplants from younger donors tend to be most successful.

“The conversation with Stephen was pretty simple,” Mondek said. “I said, ‘Hey, Buddy, Dad's sick and they need someone to give me stem cells, and they want to know if you want to get tested to see if you can do it.’”

Stephen’s response: “When do we go?”

After testing showed that Stephen was a compatible donor, the care team at Cedars-Sinai Guerin Children’s evaluated him to make sure that he understood and was mature enough to agree to the procedure. Then, after several weeks of pre-donation prep, he was admitted to the pediatric intensive care unit for the donation. He had to be placed under general anesthesia so that doctors could insert a catheter into a vein in his neck. Then Stephen spent six hours in a hospital bed while his blood cycled through a centrifuge that separated out the stem cells.

Stephen’s mom, Danielle Boyer, his younger brother, John, and Mondek waited anxiously through the catheter placement.

“Being an anesthesiologist, I put people to sleep every day, so I reassured myself that everyone wakes up when they go to sleep under anesthesia,” Mondek said. “But during the whole process that I've gone through, those 60 minutes when Stephen was asleep were probably the toughest.”

But all was well. Stephen’s stem cells were collected and frozen, and the family was back home that night.

A week later it was Mondek’s turn. He spent six days at Cedars-Sinai receiving chemotherapy to suppress his immune system so that his body wouldn’t reject Stephen’s donor cells. Then he was ready for the transplant.

“Transplant day is always dramatic,” Paquette said. “The patient knows that they cannot survive without the stem cells, and the delivery of the stem cells into their body is like a rebirth. We call that day their stem cell birthday.”

Paquette said that it takes two to three weeks for the newly transplanted stem cells to begin to grow. For Mondek, this meant two more weeks in the hospital—and away from his family—to protect his newborn immune system. But on Aug. 16, Mondek was discharged from the hospital and made it to the final inning of Stephen’s Little League game.

“I felt good helping my dad,” Stephen said, “and it felt good to have him home.”

Paquette said that it could take a year or more to determine whether the new immune system Mondek received from Stephen can beat his leukemia. But he called Mondek “tough” and said that he and Mondek won’t accept anything less than a cure.

John Chute MD, director of the Division of Hematology and Cellular Therapy at Cedars-Sinai, said that the Mondek family’s experience is an example of the level of personalized, state-of-the-art care that Cedars-Sinai stem cell transplant patients receive.

“Our exceptional patient care is part of the reason that our stem cell transplantation program has enjoyed consecutive top 10 national rankings by the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Registry (CIBMTR) for patient outcomes since 2021,” Chute said.

Mondek is optimistic about his particular outcome.

“Everything lined up for this,” Mondek said. “Dr. Paquette said the perfect donor for me would be someone who's young and healthy and a 50% match, and we found him. He was right here in front of us.”

Weeding Out Cancer With CAR T

Wed, 16 Jul 2025 08:00:00 -0700

In 2023, Sixta Georgina Calderón Hernández planted a garden to help her cope with a diagnosis of lymphoma and the side effects of chemotherapy. A year later, like a vicious weed, the cancer came back. But thanks to the CAR T-cell therapy Calederón Hernández received this spring at Cedars-Sinai, her cancer is now in remission and she is back to tending the garden she has grown to love.

Calederón Hernández, who goes by the nickname “Gina,” is the 100th patient to receive CAR T-cell therapy at Cedars-Sinai, said Akil Merchant, MD, Lymphoma Program co-director.

“In cancers such as lymphoma, immune cells, which are some of the most powerful anticancer tools that we have, don’t work very well,” said Merchant, who is Calderón Hernández oncologist. “In CAR T-cell therapy we remove those immune cells from the patient, engineer them in the lab to target the cancer cells, then give them back to the patient so they can kill the cancer.”

Since the Cedars-Sinai CAR T program opened in 2020, it has seen rapid, exponential growth, said Justin Darrah, MD, co-director of the Lymphoma Program and director of the CAR T Program.

“Cedars-Sinai is now able to offer this great treatment to many more patients,” Darrah said. “The fact that we have been able to treat 100 patients so far is just an incredible feeling. And the program continues to grow.”

Calderón Hernández, who will turn 60 in August, said her illness began with what she thought was a throat infection.

“I went to the ER in Long Beach. They admitted me and started many tests,” she said. “They removed my tonsils and sent them to pathology. That’s when they said, ‘We’re sorry, but you have lymphoma. You have cancer.’”

When chemotherapy treatment caused Calderón Hernández to lose her hair—for her the most difficult part of treatment—her great nephew Mateo, who is 7, was there to comfort her.

“I was crying in my room,” she said. “He came in and saw me crying. He said, ‘I know why you’re sad, Auntie. It’s because you don’t have hair. But you know what? That haircut doesn’t look bad. You look good, Auntie.’”

Calderón Hernández was cancer free for just under a year and had returned to work as a nanny. But soon she found herself back in the hospital receiving news that her lymphoma had returned.

“Starting over was very hard,” Calderón Hernández said. “The only thing that’s held me up has been God. I thank God for this new chance at life and for the doctors.”

Her oncologist in Long Beach connected Calderón Hernández with the CAR T Program at Cedars-Sinai. This therapy gave Calderón Hernández an alternative to a bone marrow transplant, which is more difficult on the body, said Darrah, a member of Calderón Hernández's care team.

“CAR T-cell therapy is designed for patients who are having a poor response to other treatment and allows us to cure patients who otherwise were incurable,” Darrah said.

And while Merchant warned Calderón Hernández that CAR T-cell therapy could come with side effects—including memory issues, nausea and dizziness—she said that she didn’t experience those during her seven-day hospital stay.

“After the second day of treatment, I walked 20 minutes around the hospital and took selfies to send my sister,” Calderón Hernández said. She was doing so well she was sent home three days early.

In an active clinical research program, scientists are working to understand which patients are most likely to benefit from existing CAR T-cell therapies and to develop new ones, Merchant said.

“Patients whose cancers may not be treatable with currently approved CAR T-cell therapies could access the next generation of therapies here through clinical trials,” said Robert Figlin, MD, interim director of Cedars-Sinai Cancer. “Some of those options could be more effective than those currently FDA [Food and Drug Administration] approved, and making them available is part of our commitment to pair each patient with the most effective possible treatment.”

He said that most patients who are still in remission nine to 12 months after CAR T treatment are cured, and that is his hope for Calderón Hernández.

“We're going to continue to do scans to look for lymphoma,” Merchant said. “Her scans are negative, and I hope that they stay that way. Fingers crossed for Gina.”