Autologous blood cell transplantation in B-CLL: Response to chemotherapy prior to mobilization predicts the stem cell yield

Successful stem cell mobilization and collection is possible in B-CLL after a favorable response to preceding chemotherapy, and also after treatment with the new nucleoside analogues fludarabine and cladribine, A poor response, on the other hand, seemed to predict a mobilization failure, CD34(+) cell selection resulted in a 2- to 3-log reduction of the CLL cells in the harvests, Engraftment with both unselected and selected progenitor cells was rapid, and need for hospitalization was short. High-dose therapy,vith stem cell rescue appears to be capable of inducing CRs of high quality, but so far the follow-up is too short to define whether this will be translated into prolonged disease-free survival.