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This type of treatment is being studied for Ewing tumors (Ewing sarcomas) that are hard to cure with other treatments, such as tumors that have spread (metastasized) to other parts of the body or that have come back after standard treatment. So far, it's not clear if a stem cell transplant is better than other treatments (such as standard chemotherapy), so most doctors recommend it be done only as part of a clinical trial.

What is a stem cell transplant?

The doses of chemotherapy (chemo) drugs that can be given safely are normally limited by the side effects these drugs can cause. One of the most serious is damage to the stem cells in bone marrow, which make new blood cells. Even though higher doses of chemo might be more effective in treating Ewing tumors, they can’t be given because they would severely damage these bone marrow cells, leading to life-threatening shortages of blood cells.

To try to get around this problem, high-dose chemo (sometimes along with radiation therapy) can be followed by a stem cell transplant to “rescue” the bone marrow, giving the person new blood stem cells to replace those that were destroyed.

In the past, this type of treatment was often called a bone marrow