However, once malignant melanoma has spread to other organs, it is rarely curable. Surgery can be used to treat malignant melanoma but in many patients the disease has spread too much to be removed by surgery. Medical treatment with chemotherapy can be used to treat malignant melanoma, but it has been relatively unsuccessful for patients whose cancer has spread to other organs. This form of therapy is where marrow cells or stem cells are collected from the patient and used to rescue bone marrow function after very high doses of chemotherapy. The effects of this kind of therapy do not last long and do offer any survival advantage over treat with standard chemotherapy.
Allogenic transplants are cells collected from relatives of the patient.
However, allogenic BMTs are usually combined with powerful doses of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. These additional treatments are associated with toxic side effects, often making BMTs too dangerous to attempt in many patients. In this study researchers plan to treat patients with advanced malignant melanoma with transplanted stem cells from a genetically matched brother or sister. These stem cells are healthy cells collected from the bone marrow of the patient's relative. Once the stem cells are transplanted they help to make new blood cells.