Immunomagnetic Removal of Malignant Cells from Human Bone Marrow Prior to Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation

Abstract

Autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) following myeloablative chemoradiotherapy is an alternative to conventional chemotherapy for poor prognosis lymphoid malignancies in patients without HLA- and MLR-identical donor for allogenous bone marrow transplantation N. However, the patient’s bone marrow (BM) might be infiltrated by tumor cells even in clinically complete remission. Many transplantation centers are investigating different techniques to remove these tumor cells from the BM prior to the marrow reinfusion, therefore. Monoclonal antibodies directed against tumor associated antigens are being used either in the presence of complement or bound to toxins or inert particles as magnetic microspheres [2, 3]. We report here purging results in the BM of the last 27 out of 33 patients suffering from C-ALL, B-ALL, Burkitt’s lymphoma, T?ALL or T-cell-lymphoma (Fig. 1).