Stem Cell Mobilization and Harvesting Failure in Case of Heavily Pretreated Patients

High-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation have become a standard curative treatment in various hematologic malignancies. Many factors can affect the success of mobilization and hematopoietic stem cell harvesting. The aim of this study was to analyze factors that lead to mobilization failure. We conducted a retrospective study on 19 patients with failure of stem cell harvesting. All patients were administered high doses of GCS-F (filgrastim, 15 μg/kg/day) and 0.24 mg/kg of plerixafor on day +5 or +10 of harvesting. The median age of the study population was 51 years (range 35–67) and 52.6% (n = 10) were males. The study group included 4 (21%) subjects with multiple myeloma, 6 (31.5%) with Hodgkin lymphoma, 8 cases (42.1%) with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and 1 patient with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Each patient received 2.78 (range 1–5) lines of chemotherapy, administered in 11.57 (range 2 to over 20) cycles of treatment. In hematologic malignancies it is very important to collect stem cells in time, in order to reduce mobilization failure. As we have shown in our studied cases, multiple lines of polychemotherapy with or without radiotherapy lead to mobilization failure.