Even patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in blast crisis were treated with chemotherapy, followed by infusion of autologous bone marrow that had been collected during the chronic phase of the disease and cryopreserved at -198 degrees C. The mean age of the nine females and two males in this study was 34 years with an average duration of the chronic phase of the disease of 5.5 years. Seven out of the 11 patients had a splenectomy prior to intensive chemotherapy. The median survival of the first four patients who received 6-thioguanine, cytosine arabinoside, daunorubicin (TAD) chemotherapy was 2.6 weeks and no patient reachieved the chronic phase of CML. The second group of seven patients received more intensive chemotherapy (MAdHAT), which included melphalan 30 mg/m2 days 1, 2, and 3; Adriamycin 50 mg/m2 intravenously (iv) day 1, hydroxyurea 1500 mg/m2 by mouth for 5-7 days, cytosine arabinoside 100 mg/m2 continuous infusion for 5-7 days, and VM-26 100 mg/m2 iv on day 3. Six out of these seven patients reachieved chronic phase CML after bone marrow reinfusion. The median survival was 29.9 weeks for all patients and 33 weeks for the six patients who reachieved chronic phase CML. All patients subsequently died of recurrent blast crisis. There was no correlation between the time of bone marrow storage and the duration of subsequent chronic phase CML. These studies have shown that autologous bone marrow transplantation after high-dose chemotherapy can result in bone marrow engraftment with reestablishment of chronic phase CML, and prolongation of survival.

Seven different human melanoma cell lines have been tested for the presence of melanoma associated antigen p97. The sensitivity of membrane immunofluorescence assays for the antigen was increased by using a mixture of antibodies to several epitopes of p97. Six of eight melanoma lines were strongly positive. Normal bone marrow was negative. When cultured p97‐positive melanoma cells were added to normal marrow, the authors were able to detect 5% contamination, by fluorescence‐activated cell sorting (FACS) and immunofluorescence (IF). No melanoma cells were found in one fresh and nine frozen bone marrow specimens of melanoma patients (including two with known positive marrow by routine histologic study) evaluated for autologous bone marrow transplantation after high‐dose chemotherapy.