Haematological toxicities associated with dose-intensive chemotherapy, the role for and use of recombinant growth factors

High-dose chemotherapy is increasingly accepted as a treatment approach in a number of tumour types. However, there are controversies surrounding its efficacy and there is a need to consider its safety. In view of this, much effort has been directed towards the provision of adequate supportive care strategies to prevent toxicities and to ameliorate myelosuppression. Severe anaemia and its associated symptoms, for example, fatigue can have a debilitating effect on a patient's quality of life and often necessitates red blood cell transfusions. Erythropoietin, a glycoprotein hormone which stimulates red blood cell production, has been established for the treatment of anaemia in patients with chronic renal insufficiency. It is currently approved in most countries for treating anaemia associated with cancer, and its role is emerging especially in patients undergoing high-dose chemotherapy. This paper gives an overview of the studies conducted to date with epoetin alfa (recombinant human erythropoietin) in patients receiving allogeneic and autologous bone marrow transplants or peripheral blood stem cells in conjunction with high-dose chemotherapy. In addition, there are some novel clinical applications for epoetin alfa: for example, in delayed anaemia, as a supportive strategy prior to high-dose chemotherapy and as a synergistic enhancer of blood progenitor cell mobilisation in combination with granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF).