Morphologic, immunophenotypic and in vitro growth characteristics of blood and bone marrow associated with stem cell mobilisation in patients with lymphoma.

The proportion of CD34+ cells in the bone marrow (BM) is predictive of the size of progenitor cell mobilisation into the blood (PB). To investigate which other PB and BM parameters may be related to mobilisation, we analysed at steady state PB and BM of 23 patients with relapsed or resistant lymphoma before administering high-dose cyclophosphamide and G-CSF. Cell morphology, number of CD34+ cells, and growth in clonogenic assay and in long- term cultures (LTC) were determined and then correlated with mobilisation extent (CD34+ and GM-CFC) and quality (growth of harvested cells in LTC). We found that the good mobilising patients (CD34 > 50 × 103/ml, n=10) had several baseline BM characteristics (number of CD34+ MNC, GM-CFC, BFU-E, production of CFCs in LTC) similar to a group of 12 healthy controls, while patients with reduced mobilisation (CD34 < 50 × 103/ml, n=13) had clearly reduced BM progenitors and LTC growth (p< 0.05). In a multivariate analysis including baseline clinical, blood and bone marrow cha...