High dose chemotherapy with autologous bone marrow transplantation for limitid small cell lung cancer

In 1980 we initiated a pilot study of high dose chemotherapy intensified with autologous bone marrow transplantation (ABMT) for seven patients with limited small cell lung cancer. Six pa-tients were given the ABMT initially while one male patient received the ABMT late to inten-sify three courses of induction therapy. He further received radiotherapy and underwent a left pneumonectomy and adoptive immunotherapy, because the presence of residual tumor cells, and has maintained desease-free survival for over 117 weeks. Among the first six patients there were two with complete responses, two with partial responses and one who experienced no change, a total response rate of 80%. One patient died of cardiac tamponade at day 7 and could not be evaluated. The median survival time of 41 (range 34-108) weeks was not encouraging. In conclusion: an increased drug dose with ABMT to intensify the chemotherapy provided disap-pointing results both when the ABMT was used initially and when it was given late, after in-duction chemotherapy. (Jpn. J. Clin. Oncol. 20: 94—98, 1990) Key words. Small cell lung cancer—Autologous bone marrow transplantation—High dose chemotherap