Mother and child reunion

While the graft-versus-leukemia effect of T-cell -depleted haploidentical family stem-cell transplantation is considered to be largely based on NK-cell alloreactivity, T-cell alloreactivity might still play an important role. In this issue of Blood, Stern and colleagues show that recipients of haploidentical stem-cell grafts may experience better outcome if the mother rather than the father serves as stem-cell donor, an effect that occurred independent of NK-cell alloreactivity.