Biologic therapy in patients receiving salvage treatment.

In recent years, biologic response modifiers, including recombinant cytokines and hematopoietic growth factors, have been used to treat patients with refractory hematologic malignancies and solid tumors, as well as chemotherapy-associated myelosuppression and thrombocytopenia and treatment- and/or malignancy-related anemia. Various cytokines appear to be effective in patients with hematologic malignancies, but long-term and durable responses in the salvage setting are rare. In patients with solid tumors, such as renal cell carcinoma, malignant melanoma, and colorectal cancer, cytokines may have a limited role in primary therapy but are of little value in salvage therapy. Complications of malignancy and antineoplastic therapy are widely treated with hematopoietic growth factors, like granulocyte colony-stimulating factor and granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor, and more recently the interferons and interleukins have demonstrated a potential role in this setting.