Monitoring of Erythroid Lineage Specific Chimerism Following Allogeneic Hematopoietic Transplantation for Thalassemia Major

The purpose of this study is to collect peripheral blood and bone marrow aspirate samples from thalassemia patients in Tehran, in a collaborative effort to develop an erythroid lineage specific chimerism assay applicable to patients with thalassemia. Development of such an assay would be useful both for identification of the exact mutation causing the disease, as well as for providing a direct method to measure and monitor the kinetics of donor erythropoiesis in this patient population following transplant.