Tutorial: Treatment and hematopoietic cell transplantation for breast cancer: the past, the present, is there a future?

At the end of the past century chemotherapy for breast cancer was characterized by dose intensification. Several authors reported on dose-dense (more frequent) and dose-intense (high-dose) treatment. In addition, studies of high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem transplantation for stage II to IV breast cancer were started. The first results of allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation for breast cancer revealed a positive immune effect and encouraged a handful of small case studies in the last decade of the last century.This article summarizes the results of several studies using high-dose chemotherapy and autologous stem cell transplantation, as well as the results of studies using allogeneic transplantation for breast cancer.