BONE MARROW TRANSPLANTATION

Funds contributed to the Berloni Foundation finance research projects agreed with the IME Foundation - the Mediterranean Institute of Hematology- also under the direction of Professor Guido Lucarelli, an international leader in clinical research on thalassemia.
The Bone Marrow Transplantation Center at the IME Foundation in Rome has been acknowledged as a ‘Highly specialized center' by Italy 's Ministry of Health, and is listed under the peace projects supported by the Italian Government .

In its homozygous form, thalassemia is the world's most common genetic disease. In the Mediterranean and Middle-Eastern regions alone, there are 200,000 children with thalassemia, 8 thousand of them live in Italy .
Their survival depends on receiving fortnightly transfusions as early as from the age of 3 to 6 months and daily 12-hour subcutaneous infusions of Desferoxamine. This is the only way to compensate severe anemia and remove excess iron associated with transfusions. Mortality rates are 5 per cent before the age of 10, between 5 and 10 per cent from 10 to 20 years of age, and 50 per cent after 20 years of age.

Children with thalassemia and their families had no hope, as no cure existed until December 1981.
From then on, against all criticism, while morally enduring initial deaths, going beyond biological barriers once considered impossible to overcome, and with people's help, hundreds of children afflicted with hematological diseases, 65 per cent of them with thalassemia, have undergone transplantation initially at the Bone Marrow Transplantation Center in Pesaro and later in Rome as well as in numerous other national and international Centers.
80 per cent of those children are now at home, cured of the disease.

Children from Sardinia , Sicily , Calabria , Lombardy, Piedmont and regions all over Italy have received bone marrow transplants, as have children from Iran , Iraq , Palestine , Egypt and all Arab Countries, India , and from other nations all over the world, including the United States , Russia , Rumania , Argentina , South Africa , Tobago , China .
Pioneered in Italy , this new technique has had an enormous impact on the scientific community internationally. More importantly, it has given a ray of hope to the families of children who have thalassemia.

Results obtained at the International Center for Transplantation in Thalassemia are made accessible to University Clinics and Hospitals in Italy and worldwide committed to curing thalassemia with the renowned ‘Pesaro Protocol' for transplantation.

Requests are increasing for clinical and scientific training from physicians in geographical areas where the incidence of thalassemia is higher. In response to this demand, cooperation schemes have been established under the aegis of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with countries in the Mediterranean rim, including Iran , Egypt , Palestine , Iraq , Lebanon , Tunisia , Morocco . The aim of said cooperation schemes is setting up Bone Marrow Transplantation Centers in those countries with the aid of the Italian Government through the I.M.E and the Berloni Foundation against Thalassemia .

Professor Guido Lucarelli
Head Scientist