Effects of recombinant human hematopoietic growth factors on leukemic blasts from children with acute myeloblastic or lymphoblastic leukemia.

The responses of blast cells from 52 cases of pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and 81 cases of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL) to 11 hematopoietic growth factors were determined using a 3 H-thymidine assay. There was considerable variation in the ability of growth factors to stimulate thymidine incorporation among individual cases of AML. Blasts from almost one half of the patients (25 out of 52) with AML were responsive to growth factors such as IL-3, G-CSF, or GM-CSF