High-dose chemotherapy followed by autologous stem cell transplantation can improve the outcome of relapsed and refractory Hodgkin's disease (HD) patients. The objective of the trial was to determine the mobilizing potential of the DHAP salvage regimen (dexamethasone, cytarabine, cisplatin) for the collection of peripheral blood stem cells (PBSC) in patients with relapsed HD. The target yield of harvesting CD34 + cells was ≥ 2 10⁶/kg in order to support the subsequent myeloablative chemotherapy. Most of the 105 patients included were intensively pre-treated with different combination chemotherapy regimens prior to mobilization. The use of DHAP followed by granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF; 10 μg/kg) resulted in the successful collection of adequate numbers of PBSC in 97.1% of patients (102 of 105) with a median harvest of CD34 + cells of 13 10⁶/kg (range 2.6 - 85.1). More than 2.0 10⁶ CD34 + cells/kg were achieved in 65 of 103 (63%) patients after 1 apheresis, the maximum number of aphereses for all patients was 3. It was found that the optimal time of PBSC harvest was at days 13 - 16 after initiating the mobilization regimen.

These results demonstrate that the salvage chemotherapy regimen, such as DHAP combined with G-CSF, can be successfully used to mobilize PBSC in HD patients.