Summary:We describe a single centre experience of eight consecutive patients with relapsed or refractory Ph + ALL treated with the FLAG/idarubicin regimen followed by BMT or PBSCT. Following FLAG/idarubicin, one achieved a partial response and seven CR. All patients subsequently received allogeneic transplants: one sibling BMT, three matched unrelated (MUD) BMT and four sibling PBSCT. Two patients received second transplants with PBSC from their original BM donors following FLA/Ida with no further conditioning. Three patients are alive in CR 9, 24 and 32 months after transplant. Seven of eight patients had a cytogenetic response following FLAG/Ida induction and one of seven became bcr-abl negative. All eight patients had a complete cytogenetic response following transplant. Four of five assessable patients became p190 bcr-abl negative after transplant; three of these subsequently relapsed. Both patients with the p210 bcr-abl transcript remained bcrabl positive in CR after transplant. FLAG/Ida was well tolerated and appears to be effective in inducing remission in relapsed Ph + ALL. The use of FDR-containing chemotherapy without further conditioning prior to PBSCT deserves further study in heavily pretreated patients and, in patients with relapsed ALL following BMT, may be a safer option than DLI (donor lymphocyte infusion) by avoiding the associated risk of aplasia. Keywords: fludarabine; FLAG; acute lymphoblastic leukaemia; Philadelphia chromosome; bcr-abl; peripheral blood stem cell transplantation The Ph chromosome, t(9;22)(q34;q11), is detected in up to 25% of adults and in 2-6% of children with ALL and the bcr-abl transcript is detectable by PCR in up to 32% of adults with ALL. 1,2 Most childhood and more than 50% of adult Ph + ALL express the p190 rather than the p210 bcrabl fusion transcript. 3 The prognosis with chemotherapy alone is very poor with almost no long-term survivors, Correspondence: Dr M Deane, Department of Haematology, Norfolk and Norwich Hospital, Brunswick Road, Norwich, NR1 3SR, UK Received 22 April 1998; accepted 30 July 1998 median CR duration of 7 months and 13% 3-year diseasefree survival (DFS) probability in adults. 1,2,4 BMT from a sibling donor is a more effective treatment with 2-year DFS probabilities of 38 and 46% for patients in 1st CR and 41 and 28% for patients beyond 1st CR in the IBMTR series 5 and the series reported by Chao et al. 6 Radich et al 7 reported 30 patients who received BMT in CR or relapse, of whom nine were disease-free beyond 2 years. Casper et al 8 reported 68% DFS at 13 months in 14 paediatric patients who received BMT in CR.The results of chemotherapy in patients with relapsed acute leukaemia after BMT are poor especially in those who relapse early. 9 Second BMT is associated with a high mortality and morbidity especially when performed within 1 year of the initial transplant with only 10% long-term survivors in the IBMTR series. [10][11][12] The role of DLI as adoptive immunotherapy for relapsed CML after BMT has been established in recent years. [13][1...