Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation - Blog Science Connections

High-Dose Chemotherapy and Autologous Bone
Marrow Transplantation in Breast Cancer:
The Beth Israel-Dana-Farber Cancer
Institute Experience
Karen Antman, Paul Eder, W. David Henner, Beverly Teicher,
Tom Shea, Anthony Ellas, Sue Schryber, Bob Siegel,
Lowell Schnipper, and Emil Frei III
While allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) currently results in a
disease-free survival rate of 50% in patients with acute myelogenous leukemia
in first remission, and autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) and
allogeneic BMT for lymphoma has yielded a disease-free survival rate of
20-50% (1-3), the role of high-dose therapy with ABMT has only recently
been scrutinized in the treatment of solid tumors. Selected neuroblastomas
can apparently be cured, and there are possible cures of small cell lung
cancer, gliomas, and Ewing's sarcoma (4). The major current limitation in
the effective bone marrow transplantation of solid tumors is the lack of an
optimal preparative regimen for cytoreduction for the more common adult
solid tumors.
Criteria for successful ABMT include a malignancy responsive to cytoreductive
therapy; an effective cytroreductive regimen whose limiting toxicity
is bone marrow failure; transplant early in the course of the disease when
there is minimal tumor burden and the least probability of resistance; and
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