Peripheral blood stem cell autografts in the treatment of lymphoid malignancies: initial experience in three patients.

Large numbers of circulating haemopoietic progenitor cells were collected from three patients with lymphoid neoplasms for the purpose of haemopoietic reconstitution following intensive chemotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. Each patient underwent four to six leukaphereses at a time when the circulating stem cell pool was expanded. 2-3 weeks after the end of myelosuppressive chemotherapy. The peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMNC) thus obtained were assayed for granulocyte-macrophage colony-forming cells (CFU-GM) and were cryopreserved in liquid nitrogen. Two patients were autografted with PBMNC containing 60 X 10(4) and 76 X 10(4) CFU-GM/kg body weight respectively. Both these patients showed prompt engraftment which is stable at +10 and +6 months. A third patient who was autografted with PBMNC containing 33 X 10(4) CFU-GM showed only temporary and incomplete engraftment. These observations confirm that the peripheral blood may be used as a source of haemopoietic stem cells for autografting, but criteria for predicting engraftment are at present uncertain.