[Bone marrow autograft and cancer in children]

Since about 15 years intensive chemotherapy followed by autologous bone marrow transplantation has been used on the basis of "dose-response" principle to treat certain children with tumours of sombre prognosis. At present, the main indications for this method are metastatif neuroblastoma in less than one-year old children, non-Hodgkin's malignant lymphomas in partial remission or relapse, refractory or recurrent Hodgkin's disease and some peculiar forms of Wilms' tumour. In other tumours, such as rhabdomyosarcoma, Ewing's sarcoma or brain tumours, the indications have not yet been clearly determined. The treatment must be administered as part of multicentre French or European trials conducted in specialized centres. The practice and application of autologous bone marrow transplantation are being revolutionized by the availability of haematopoietic growth factors and the development of the peripheral blood stem cells reinjection technique. Genic therapy will soon have major repercussions in this field.