THE Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) Division of Cytokine Biology recently held a workshop to explore the clinical uses of hematopoietic growth factors (HGF), the hormonelike proteins that control the development and differentiation of blood cells (See From the FDA, page 1296).
Nine potential human HGFs have been identified, their genes cloned, and their chromosomal locations pinpointed. They have been produced in quantity by recombinant DNA methods.
In the past 2 years, several HGFs have been evaluated in clinical trials. Some of the investigators conducting these trials presented the emerging applications for the agents.
Cancer Therapy.—
Jordan Gutterman, MD, of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Tex, chaired a session on the use of two HGFs, granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) and granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), as adjuvants in cancer chemotherapy. Gutterman said that early results of several studies indicate that the agents have reduced periods of severe neutropenia