Normal and leukaemic haematopoiesis in bone marrow and peripheral blood of patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia

In the majority of newly diagnosed patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), the bone marrow contains consistent numbers of normal Ph-negative surrogate stem cells (LTC-IC) which seem to decline rapidly with time. This is confirmed by mobilization studies showing that early after diagnosis is the optimal time to collect Ph-negative progenitor to be utilized for restoring Ph-negative haematopoiesis. In the marrow of the majority of CML patients at diagnosis Ph-positive LTC-IC are found at a lower frequency than Ph-negative LTC-IC and, unexpectedly, they do not show a tendency to increase with time as long as patients remain in chronic phase. Therefore, the decline of normal haematopoiesis does not seem related to a parallel increase in Ph-positive stem cells