INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 10, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Franciscan Health and Ossium Health have successfully completed the world’s first reported bone marrow transplant to treat a non-malignant disease using bone marrow recovered from a deceased organ donor. The procedure was performed at Franciscan Health using bone marrow supplied by Ossium.
The patient, a 40-year-old woman with a decade-long history of aplastic anemia, received an organ donor bone marrow stem cell transplant on April 18, 2026. Initially diagnosed in 2015, her disease progressed from stable aplastic anemia to severe aplastic anemia despite multiple lines of therapy. Serial bone marrow biopsies demonstrated worsening disease. Because her disease no longer responded to medication, her care team pursued a transplant to replace her failing marrow with healthy blood-forming stem cells. Following a reduced-intensity conditioning regimen, she received a transplant with a cell dose of 6.84 million CD34+ cells/kg from a deceased organ donor.
Six months after transplant, the transplant recipient has achieved durable engraftment and hematologic recovery, meaning the donor marrow has taken hold and restored her blood counts. She is transfusion independent (she no longer needs blood or platelet transfusions) and has achieved full donor chimerism, meaning her blood and immune system are now produced entirely by the donor’s stem cells. To date, she has not experienced graft-versus-host disease (GVHD), a complication in which donor immune cells attack the recipient’s body.
For non-malignant conditions including severe aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease, beta thalassemia, and other inherited or acquired bone marrow failure disorders, bone marrow-derived stem cells are widely regarded as the preferred stem cell source over peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs). For these transplants, the priority is durable engraftment with the lowest possible risk of chronic GVHD. This differs from transplants for blood cancers, where some donor immune activity helps fight the disease (the graft-versus-leukemia effect). Bone marrow grafts contain fewer T cells (the donor immune cells that drive GVHD) than PBSC grafts and are associated with significantly lower rates of chronic GVHD, making bone marrow the source of choice for non-malignant diseases.
Despite this clinical preference, the majority of unrelated donors from living donor registries ultimately donate PBSCs rather than bone marrow. PBSC collection is less invasive for the donor as it is performed through an outpatient procedure without anesthesia. By contrast, living donor bone marrow aspiration is a surgical procedure performed in an operating room under general or regional anesthesia, and recovery takes longer. Given the choice, many living donors and collection centers favor the less invasive option, leaving bone marrow in comparatively short supply. Organ donor bone marrow supplied by Ossium offers a path to expanding the availability of this preferred graft source without requiring a living donor to undergo a surgical procedure.
“Bone marrow transplantation for severe aplastic anemia has been performed since the 1970s using living related and unrelated donors. To our knowledge, this is the first reported transplant of deceased organ donor bone marrow for severe aplastic anemia,” said Felix Mensah, MD, the treating physician at Franciscan Health. “This case shows why continued innovation in transplant medicine matters, and why we need more donor options, so that every patient with a life-threatening bone marrow failure disorder has access to potentially curative therapy.”
This transplant builds on a milestone Ossium first reached in June 2024, when the first blood cancer patient was treated with the company’s organ donor bone marrow.
“Reaching the first non-malignant transplant is a defining moment,” said Kevin Caldwell, CEO, Co-Founder & President of Ossium. “Bone marrow has long been recognized as the optimal graft source for diseases like severe aplastic anemia, sickle cell disease, and beta thalassemia, yet it has remained difficult to access. By recovering and banking bone marrow from organ donors, we can consistently deliver a high cell dose from the preferred graft source to optimize treatment outcomes.”
Ossium plans to support the transplantation of additional patients with both malignant and non-malignant diseases over the course of this year through its HOPE Program, continuing to expand access to deceased donor bone marrow as a graft source for conditions where it offers clear clinical advantages.
About Franciscan Health
The Franciscan Alliance healthcare ministry began in Lafayette, Ind. in 1875. Today, Franciscan Alliance is a large Catholic health care system in the Midwest with 11 hospital campuses, more than 16,000 employees and a number of nationally recognized Centers of Health Care Excellence. Hospitals include Franciscan Health Carmel; Franciscan Health Crawfordsville; Franciscan Health Crown Point; Franciscan Health Dyer; Franciscan Health Indianapolis; Franciscan Health Lafayette; Franciscan Health Michigan City; Franciscan Health Mooresville; Franciscan Health Munster; Franciscan Health Indianapolis Orthopedic Hospital and Franciscan Health Rensselaer.
About Ossium Health
Ossium Health is a bioengineering company that leverages its proprietary organ donor bone marrow banking platform to develop stem cell therapies for patients with life-threatening hematologic conditions and musculoskeletal defects. Founded in 2016, the company is led by Kevin Caldwell, CEO, Co-Founder & President, and Erik Woods, Chief Science Officer, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President. Ossium’s manufacturing facility is registered with the FDA and its laboratory is certified under the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA). For more information, visit ossiumhealth.com or follow the company on LinkedIn and X.
Media Contacts
Franciscan Health
Tony Veneziano
317-528-7986
Tony.Veneziano@FranciscanAlliance.org
Ossium Health
Jane Griffin
415-513-5535
press@ossiumhealth.com
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