Expanding the role of blood progenitor cells

Five years ago the haemopoietic growth factors were introduced to clinical practice with the aim of reducing the depth and duration of chemotherapy induced neutropenia. Now, they have a wider remit, with important roles in supporting dose intensive treatments and mobilising BPC. Similarly, BPC themselves have until now been predominantly used in autologous transplantation following myeloablative treatments. In the next five years we can expect to see BPC from novel sources manipulated to feature in many new roles, including allogeneic transplantation, multicyclic dose-intensive chemotherapy and gene therapy.