Shimon Slavin, MD

Champlin and colleagues haveelegantly summarized the conceptof nonmyeloablativestem cell transplantation (NST),stressing the importance of this newlyemerging procedure for the treatmentof patients with life-threateningmalignant hematologic and nonhematologicdiseases. This review doesnot include a description of the safetyand efficacy of NST for the treatmentof many life-threateningnonmalignant diseases for which noalternative therapy exists. This categoryencompasses a long list of geneticdisorders, diseases caused by adeficiency of stem cell products, andsyndromes associated with immunedeficiency. However, discussion ofthese illnesses is beyond the scopeof this review, which focuses oncancer.

Champlin et al review a most interesting topic that has emerged recently; namely, the use of nonmyeloablative conditioning regimens to induce immune-mediated graft-vs-leukemia (GVL) effects, or, in a more general sense, graft-vs-tumor (GVT)