Early Bone Marrow Transplantation Efforts: Honoring Jan Raszek-Rosenbusch and Franciszek Groër

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From 1938 to 1941, Jan Raszek-Rosenbusch and Franciszek Groër attempted intramedullary bone marrow administration at King John Casimir University in Lwow.
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They aspirated several milliliters of marrow from an unrelated adult donor and immediately injected it into a child recipient, matching donors and recipients by ABO blood group.
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No procedure-related immediate or delayed toxicity was observed, and some improvement in general condition was reported, but the diagnoses and outcomes are difficult to interpret by current standards.
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Because there was no HLA matching, conditioning, or chimerism testing, the authors characterize these procedures as attempts to transplant rather than transplantation itself.
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Later advances in conditioning, stem cell biology, and HLA matching led to successful allogeneic transplantation and the modern therapeutic era, established by Thomas and colleagues’ 1977 report.

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