Mobilization/harvest and transplantation with blood stem cells, manipulated or unmanipulated

Collection of peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) is very feasible without the risk of anesthesia or invasive multiple bone marrow aspirations, because it can be accomplished by modification to the standard apheresis techniques that are routinely used at blood centers for the collection of single donor platelets. Use of PBSC results in rapid and durable trilineage hematopoietic recovery after myeloablative chemotherapy. There has been increasing development in technology for cell processing ('graft engineering'), moving from the experimental to the clinical settings. Although peripheral blood stem cell transplantation (PBSCT) makes 'cell component therapy' far more effective than bone marrow transplantation, its advantages/disadvantages still need to be clarified in children. The following paper presents our pediatric experience of PBSCT.