A Preliminary Report on Autologous Bone Marrow Transplantation for the Treatment of Advanced Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma

Four patients with advanced non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of unfavorable histology were treated with marrow-lethal doses of cyclophosphamide (CY) and total body irradiation (TB1) followed by the infusion of cryopreserved autologous marrow. All four patients showed engraftment after autologous bone marrow transplantation and achieved complete remission (CR). Three of them, however, developed relapse in 1.7, 12.9 and 14.5 mo respectively after the transplantation. The other patient has survived in drug-free CR for more than 16.6 mo. There was no treatment-related death although there were some tolerable complications. These data suggest that the CY-TBI regimen may be effective in inducing CR in patients with advanced non-Hodgkin's disease but it does not contribute to preventing relapse.