Reconstitution of haemopoietic system with autologous marrow taken during relapse of acute myeloblastic leukaemia and grown in long-term culture.

In long-term cultures of bone marrow from a patient with acute myeloblastic leukaemia (AML) the leukaemic chromosome marker, which was present in a proportion of the marrow cells even during morphological remission, was not detectable after seven days of culture. After florid relapse of AML, large-scale bone marrow cultures were established while the patient received conditioning with cyclophosphamide and total body irradiation as for an allogeneic bone marrow transplant. Marrow cultured for ten days was reinfused and three and six months later the patient was in clinical remission with a normal karyotype.