Routine or not, what Ildstad is doing now would have sounded as magical as any fairy tale just a few years ago. Her research has centered on bone marrow, which produces blood and immune-system cells. Conventional bone-marrow transplants are very risky procedures, and are only done in patients with dire conditions such as leukemia. They involve complete destruction of the recipient's bone marrow, and require replacement with marrow from a donor who's as close a match as possible in all immune-system characteristics to the recipient. Finding suitable donors is difficult, and anything short of an identical twin is chancy.
Failure is usually fatal.
These facilitating cells are present only in tiny quantities less than 0.4 percent of marrow cells. They're extremely difficult to isolate, because they're similar to workhorse immune-system cells known as T cells. Ildstad has worked out a way to remove active immune-system cells which would attack any host they are given to from donor marrow while leaving the facilitating cells intact. Having facilitator-rich donor marrow opens up possibilities for transplantation. This should make it easier for the recipient to tolerate transplants of whole organs heart, kidney, liver that also come from the marrow donor.