Immunotherapy of acute myeloid leukaemia. Medical Research Council.

Seventy-one patients suffering from acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) who were already in complete remission and had already received one further course of cytotoxic drugs as consolidation therapy were randomised to receive maintenance chemotherapy alone or the same maintenance chemotherapy plus immunotherapy with BCG and irradiated allogeneic blast cells. The duration of first remission was slightly, but not significantly, longer in those patients who received immunotherapy. This was true also for the duration of survival after relapse. Comparison with other series suggested that the effect of such immunotherapy on duration of survival after relapse is probably real, but did not clearly indicate whether or not any real difference in the first remission duration existed.