Autologous Stem Cell Transplant
Autologous = Self Donor. In this procedure the patient's own stem cells are collected and frozen down. Some time later, the patient is admitted to the hospital to undergo intensive treatment with chemotherapy or radiation. After this intensive therapy the previously collected stem cells are transplanted back into the patient in a manner similar to a regular blood transfusion. This autologous transplant procedure helps patients overcome dangerous side effects resulting from the destruction of white and red blood cells and platelets from the intensive treatment. Without new stem cells, patients would have too few white cells to ward off a life-threatening infection. They would also develop anemia because of low numbers of red cells and bleeding problems caused by too few platelets, which help blood clot.
Why High Dose Therapy
Certain cancers can respond to chemotherapy with a decrease in the number of cancerous cells with every cycle of chemotherapy. However, there is sometimes a point reached where a small number of residual cancer cells remain that do not respond as well to the standard repeated doses of chemotherapy. These cells may respond to higher doses of chemotherapy. As long as patients receive adequate stem-cell support, chemotherapy doses several times higher than the conventional maximum can show impressive results and have few side effects. High-dose chemotherapy with bone-marrow or peripheral-blood transplants has improved "cure" rates for both leukemia and lymphoma--advances that have paved the way for improvements in solid-tumor therapy.
Even when high doses of chemotherapy with stem cell support does not cure certain cancers it can often cause the cancer cells to be severely depleted and suppressed. Clinical trials have shown that diseases like multiple myeloma and follicular lymphoma, that usually involve the bone marrow, can be controlled for longer periods using higher doses of chemotherapy. Therefore, the goal of some autologous transplant procedures is "disease control" rather than "cure".
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