This approach has already been demonstrated to effectively restore bone marrow function and has the additional potential benefit of not re-infusing the large population of MM cells present in bone marrow. In addition, blood cell recovery was significantly faster in PBPC patients. Another possible advantage of using PBPC is that this product may contain fewer tumor cells than bone marrow harvested for this purpose. However, highly sensitive detection techniques can still demonstrate small amounts of MM cells in half of the PBPC products. The CD34 antigen is a surface marker for early hematopoietic progenitors.
All patients receive high dose therapy with stem cell support.