Autografting in chronic myelogenous leukemia: new questions

In the 1970s, when autografting was started, it was hard to imagine that this procedure would have an application in hematological malignancies. Autografting in patients with CML has been difficult to pursue because their bone marrow is often contaminated by Philadelphia-chromosome positive cells. In recent years, renewed interest has come from this procedure and various in vivo or in vitro techniques of manipulation of Ph-positive cells, such as collection of blood progenitor cells in the early phase of recovery after intensive conventional chemotherapy in untreated or pretreated patients, long-term bone marrow culture and chemical purging of marrow cells. Despite all these interesting trials, we do not have enough data to address the question of whether autografting in CML increases the duration of the chronic phase.