ABSTRACT
It is of more than historical interest to recall that less than 50 years ago the earliest murine
experiments first suggested that bone marrow transplantation (BMT) was successful
because of immune mechanisms specific to the donor graft, independent of other antileu-
kemia therapy (1). Within the next 10 years, allogeneic BMT was attempted in humans,
rationalized by the hypothesis that the donor marrow graft “has a distinct value as an
anti-leukemia agent” (2). It took an additional 25 years for sufficient clinical data to be
generated, but through important clinical observations it became clear that allogeneic
BMT in humans is also associated with a potent graft-vs.-leukemia (GVL) effect. It was
further evident that the GVL reaction is mediated, at least in part, by mature donor T cells
contained in the marrow graft and closely associated with graft-vs.-host disease (GVHD).
It is a testament to clinical progress that in less than 5 decades, allogeneic BMT has
become a powerful and successful method of adoptive immunotherapy for cancer.
