Hodgkin’s Disease Treatments — HGFs
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Hematopoietic Growth Factors for Hodgkin's Disease
Hematopoietic Growth Factors (HGFs) work to fight Hodgkin’s disease by leveraging the healing power of the body’s immune system to stimulate the production of disease-fighting red blood cells.
“Hematopoietic” means pertaining to, or affecting, the growth of blood cells. The hematopoietic system consists of tissues, including the bone marrow and lymph nodes, involved in the production of blood. Hematopoietic Growth Factors are hormone-like substances that occur naturally in the body and stimulate bone marrow to produce blood cells.
Hematopoietic Growth Factors support hematopoietic (blood cell) colony formation in vitro. This group of substances includes erythropoietin, interleukin-3 and colony-stimulating factors (CSFs). Erythropoietin stimulates production of erythrocytes, or red blood cells. Interleukin-3 and CSFs (sometimes called hematopoietic growth factors) have overlapping capabilities to affect progenitor cells (“parent” cells that will develop into a specific type of cell) of several blood cell lines, can cause blood cells to mature, and can also affect cells outside the hematopoietic system.
Anticancer drugs like chemotherapy can damage the body’s ability to make white blood cells, red blood cells and platelets. By using HGFs to stimulate blood cell production, cancer doctors are able to increase the doses of anticancer drugs without increasing the risk of infection, or the need for transfusion with blood products.
In treating Hodgkin’s disease, clinicians at Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) use HGFs to promote bone marrow proliferation in aplastic anemia, following cytotoxic chemotherapy, or following a bone marrow transplant.
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