High Dose Cytoxan

Hello Alice:

I am also interested in high dose cytoxan. As I understand, doctors at Johns Hopkins discovered that bone marrow stem cells are protected from the toxic effects of cytoxan. Thus, they developed the Revimmune protocol with ultra high dose cytoxan that wipes out virtually your entire peripheral immune system. Then, since stem cells in the bone marrow are unharmed, they produce a new peripheral immune system in about 3 weeks with the help of Neupogen, a growth factor drug that promotes the bone marrow to produce white blood cells. The need for re-infusion of previously collected stem cells is avoided.

There have been other studies where the immune system was wiped out using other chemotherapy protocols, or with radiation and chemo, where stem cell reinfusion would be needed because the stem cells were wiped out along with the circulating white blood cells.

As to which is more effective, I don’t know. However, it seems if there is no stem cell re-infusion, there is less risk for re-introducing the disease into your reconstituting immune system.