Acute and chronic bone marrow toxicities are the major limiting factors in the treatment of
cancer. They are related to two factors.(i) The first is a decrease in the number of
hematopoietic stem cells and progenitors caused by both a lethal effect of cytotoxic agents
on these cells and by differentiation of stem cells provoked by a feed-back mechanism, itself
induced by the depletion of more mature marrow compartments.(ii) The second factor is a
reduction in self-renewal capacity of stem cells, which is also related to both direct (mutation) …