Successful Peripheral Blood Stem Cells Collection in Imatinib Pretreated and Nilotinib-Treated Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Patient

We report a case of a successful mobilization and harvest of the peripheral blood stem cells (PBSCs) in imatinib-pretreated and nilotinib treated 52-year-old woman diagnosed with Philadelphia chromosome-positive and BCR-ABL (b2a2) positive chronic phase CML in 2/2002. She failed interferon-alfa and imatinib treatment. She achieved her first complete molecular remission after 16 months of nilotinib treatment and later on was mobilized with filgrastim at a dose of 10 ug/kg/day applied subcutaneously once daily. The total number of 2.98 × 10(6) CD34+ cells/kg was harvested on the fourth day of the mobilization. The autologous graft of the stem cells was cryopreserved and tested for the residual disease: the FISH revealed negative results and the RT-PCR was positive (BCR-ABL/ABL ratio 0,0017 in RQ-PCR). To our knowledge, this is the first report of successful PBSC harvest in a patient significantly pretreated with imatinib and nilotinib.