Autografts with peripheral blood stem cells

This paper reports a clinical and laboratory experience of peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) autografts at a single institute. Twenty-eight children with various types of cancer underwent a total of 90 leukaphereses to collect PBSC and 17 of them subsequently received marrow-ablative therapy and PBSC autografts. We found that frozen-thawed progenitor dose is important in determining the rate of hematopoietic recovery after transplantation; in 11 patients who received more than 1 x 10(5) CFU-GM/kg, the granulocyte count reached to 0.5 x 10(9)/L in two weeks. With conditioning chemotherapy without total body irradiation, 6 of 14 patients with high-risk acute leukemia or non-Hodgkin's lymphoma have survived disease-free 3 to 25 months posttransplant. This approach may have a potential to induce prolonged remission-interval and ultimate cure.