Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation - Blog Science Connections

Phase I and II Studies of High-Dose Alkylating
Agents in Poor-Risk Patients With
Breast Cancer
D. Maraninchi, L. Piana, D. Blaise, D. Conte, L Laprand,
M. H. Gaspard, G. Michel, A. M. Stoppa, J. A. Gastaut,
J. Camerlo, A. P. Blanc, G. Nouakouitch,
and Y. Carcassonne
Bone marrow transplantation offers the technical opportunity of using high
doses of chemotherapeutic regimens for patients who have a poor prognosis
because of refractory cancers or other conditions (1,2).
For several tumors, the antitumoral effects of alkylating agents are
related to a clear dose-response relationship (3); in conventional chemotherapy
the main dose-limiting toxicity of these agents is their hematologic
toxicity. For these reasons, high doses of alkylating agents alone or in
combination are frequently selected for the conditioning regimens of cancer
patients eligible for bone marrow transplantation. In breast cancer, despite
the development of new strategies, patients with metastatic diseases or
inflammatory breast cancers are generally considered not curable (4). The
use of high doses of alkylating agents followed by autologous bone marrow
transplantation (ABMT) may, however, modify the adverse natural history of
this disease in selected patients known to have the worst prognosis.
We report here phase I and II studies of high doses of melphalan alone or
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