Pilot Study of Stem Cell Transplantation for Children and Young Adults With Refractory Crohn's Disease.

This is a study for people with Crohn's Disease (CD) that are not responsive to standard treatment. CD is a chronic disease with an auto-immune component that goes away and relapses over the years and causes lifelong impairment of health and quality of life. Regardless of the therapy used some patients remain seriously ill with active disease after multiple therapeutic options have been exhausted. There is currently no drug that will cure CD. Drug treatment is focused on controlling symptoms. Another treatment is to perform surgery but again this does not lead to cure and is often linked to infection, short gut syndrome problems and psycho-social and cosmetic issues. Therefore, a treatment that does not involve surgery or long-term drug treatment may be beneficial especially to young adults. Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been of value in other auto-immune diseases and it is possible that it could be of value in CD. This is a pilot study to determine if HSCT is safe and effective for children and young adults with severe CD. For this study the stem cells will come from the patient. This is called an autologous transplant. The patient will undergo collection and storage of his/her peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC). The patient will be given drugs to move (or mobilize) the stem cells from his/her bone marrow into his/her blood where they will be collected on a machine called apheresis (similar to dialysis.) The cells will be stored and given back to the patient about 1 month after collection.