Autologous bone marrow transplantation in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

The purpose of this review is to assess the current status of autografting in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. In the first part of the review, the prognostic factors are discussed. Only the studies that contained adequate response and survival data were selected for analysis, including peer-reviewed articles, book chapter and proceedings of international meetings. The most current and complete references were used for series reported more than once. In the second part, some areas of discussion and controversy, such as the timing of autografting and the role of marrow purging are argued. In the last part of this review we have discussed our recent experience with blood progenitor cells collected during early haemopoietic function restoration after intensive conventional treatment for patients with cytogenetic abnormalities. The first preliminary results seem highly interesting and confirm our results achieved with the same procedure in Ph-positive chronic myelogenous leukaemia.