Peripheral blood CD34 + cell count reliably predicts autograft yield

Summary: A reliable measure to predict peripheral blood progenitor cell (PBPC) autograft CD34 + cell content is required to optimize the timing of PBPC collection. We prospectively examined the peripheral blood (PB) CD34 + cell count in 59 consecutive patients with various malignancies and analyzed the correlation between the PB CD34 + cell count and various parameters in the PBPC autograft. Two hundred and thirty-five collections were performed with a median of 4.0 collections per patient (range, 2‐10). The median PB CD34 + cell count at the time of collection was 39 〈 10 6 /l (range, 0.0‐285.6). The PBPC autograft parameters measured were the CD34 + cell, colony-forming unit granulocyte‐macrophage (CFU-GM) and mononuclear cell (MNC) content. There was a strong linear correlation between PB CD34 + cells/l and autograft CD34 + cells/kg (r = 0.8477). The correlation with CFU-GM/kg (r = 0.5512) was weaker. There was no correlation between autograft CD34 + cells/kg and PB WBC (r = 0.0684), PB MNC (r = 0.1518) or PB platelet count (r = 0.2010). At our institution we aim to obtain a minimum of 0.5 〈 10 6 CD34 + cells/kg with each day of collection. We demonstrate that such a collection can be reliably obtained if the PB CD34 + cell count exceeds 5.0 〈 10 6 /l.