Dr. Friedrich Schuening came to St. Louis to start a bone marrow transplant center at St. Louis University. In November 2012, the month before he was scheduled to open the facility, he was attending a conference when he felt a shortness of breath.

Tests disclosed that he had leukemia, the disease in which he was an expert. When the bone marrow transplant center opened, he became one of the first patients.

I never would have thought, in my wildest dreams, after having treated a disease my whole professional life that I would be a patient myself, he told the Post-Dispatch at the time.

Dr. Schuening underwent two bone marrow transplants. The first was in February 2013, and a month later he was back at work treating patients. But his leukemia returned, and doctors performed a second transplant in June 2013.

His leukemia went into remission. But the bone marrow transplant, although successful, led to complications that caused his death, according to one of his physicians, Dr. Mark J. Fesler.

Dr. Schuening died on Thursday (March 27, 2014) at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. He was 71 and had lived in Creve Coeur.

He devoted his life to treating patients with blood cancers. He was an internationally known expert in stem cells, regenerative medicine and bone marrow transplants. He wrote more than 120 scientific papers.

He came to St. Louis University in May 2011, to start his third bone marrow transplant center. The first two were at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and Vanderbilt University, according to St. Louis University.

Friedrich Georg Schuening was born in 1942 in Trier, Germany. His father served in the German Navy, and his mother taught school.

At first, Dr. Schuening studied theology at the University of Mainz in Germany. Instead of going into the ministry, he began studying psychiatry, then switched to medicine to study the body. He earned an M.D. at the University of Hamburg.

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Doctor who started a cancer center at SLU became one of its first patients

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