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MINNEAPOLIS — A potentially life-changing collection of cells, drawn from his mother’s hip, has been infused into the very heart of Jonathan Pitre.

Pitre, 16, was transfused with the stem cells Thursday with his mother at his bedside.

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The stem cells dripped through an intravenous tube connected to the right atrium of Pitre’s heart, so that they could be pumped quickly and evenly through his bloodstream. The procedure — it looks much like a blood transfusion — started in late afternoon and took more than three hours.

Pitre slept through much of it.

“It feels pretty amazing that I was able to give him cells that have the potential to change his life,” said his mother, Tina Boileau, still a little unsteady from her morning surgery. “I’m happy.”

Doctors at the University of Minnesota Masonic Children’s Hospital call the transfusion “day zero” since it marks the end of one medical procedure — chemotherapy and radiation — and the beginning of another: the engraftment of his mother’s stem cells in Pitre’s bone marrow.