Experimental hematology
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Experimental hematology · Mar 1993
Interleukin-3 followed by GM-CSF for delayed engraftment after autologous bone marrow transplantation.
Recombinant human interleukin-3 (IL-3) is well-tolerated according to phase I studies, and produces trilineage hematologic responses in patients with normal bone marrow. In addition, promising results have been obtained in a variety of bone marrow failure states. We studied IL-3 in 7 patients with markedly delayed engraftment after autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) for hematologic malignancies (acute myeloid leukemia 4, chronic myeloid leukemia 1, myeloma 1, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma 1). ⋯ Hematopoietic colony assays of bone marrow cells obtained before and after treatment showed that granulocyte-macrophage colony-forming cell (CFU-GM) and erythroid blast-forming cell (BFU-E) levels were severely reduced and multilineage progenitors (CFU-GEMM) absent in all patients, and remained low after IL-3 treatment for 21 days. Sequential IL-3 and GM-CSF produced a significant but transient increase in the neutrophil counts of some patients. IL-3 appears to be of limited benefit in patients who are severely aplastic after ABMT and have very low levels of bone marrow progenitors.