Autologous transplantation of granulocyte colony-stimulating factor–primed bone marrow is effective in supporting myeloablative chemotherapy in patients with hematologic malignancies and poor peripheral blood stem cell mobilization

We assessed the hematopoietic recovery and transplantation-related mortality (TRM) of patients who had failed peripheral blood stem cell mobilization and subsequently received high-dose chemotherapy supported by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF)–primed bone marrow (BM). Studied were 86 heavily pretreated consecutive patients with acute leukemia (n = 21), refractory/relapsed non-Hodgkin lymphoma (n = 41) and Hodgkin disease (n = 17), and multiple myeloma (n = 7). There were 78 patients who showed insufficient mobilization of CD34+ cells (< 10 cells/μL), whereas 8 patients collected less than 1 × 106 CD34+ cells/kg. BM was primed in vivo for 3 days with 15 to 16 μg/kg of subcutaneous G-CSF. Median numbers of nucleated cells, colony-forming unit cells (CFU-Cs), and CD34+ cells per kilogram harvested were 3.5 × 108, 3.72 × 104, and 0.82 × 106, respectively. Following myeloablative chemotherapy, median times to achieve a granulocyte count higher than 0.5 × 109/L and an unsupported platelet count higher than 20 and 50 × 109/L were 13 (range, 8-24), 15 (range, 12-75), and 22 (range, 12-180) days, respectively, for lymphoma/myeloma patients and 23 (range, 13-53), 52 (range, 40-120), and 90 (range, 46-207) days, respectively, for leukemia patients. Median times to hospital discharge after transplantation were 17 (range, 12-40) and 27 (range, 14-39) days for lymphoma/myeloma and acute leukemia patients, respectively. TRM was 4.6%, whereas 15 patients died of disease. G-CSF–primed BM induces effective multilineage hematopoietic recovery after high-dose chemotherapy and can be safely used in patients with poor stem cell mobilization.