Introduction and prospect of peripheral blood stem cell transplantation

The number of hematopoietic stem cells circulating in peripheral blood increases remarkably during the recovery of marrow function after myelosuppressive chemotherapy. In peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, these stem cells are collected and cryopreserved, and then used to restore marrow function after myelodisruptive (high-dose) anticancer therapy, Marrow recovery is faster with this procedure than with autologous bone marrow transplantation. Recently, this procedure has been used after high-dose chemotherapy for chemosensitive solid tumors such as breast cancer. We used high-dose chemotherapy with etoposide and carboplatin, followed by peripheral blood stem cell transplantation, to treat 5 patients with intrathoracic malignant tumors, including small cell lung cancer Neutrophils recovered (> 500 microliters) with 9 to 11 days and platelets recovered (> 5,000 microliters) within 8 to 13 days after the transplantation. No other serious complication was seen. Current topics regarding this procedure, problems to be solved, and prospects for further development are discussed.