Donor Stem Cell Transplant in Treating Patients With Myeloid Cancer or Other Disease

OBJECTIVES: Primary * Determine the incidence of disease-free survival at 1 year in patients with acute or chronic myeloid leukemias undergoing T-cell-depleted hematopoietic stem cell transplantation from HLA-C mismatched, unrelated donors. Secondary * Determine the incidence of disease relapse at 1 year in patients treated with this regimen. * Determine the incidence and severity of acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) at 100 days and chronic GVHD at 1 year in these patients. * Determine the incidence of graft failure at day 100. * Determine the transplant-related mortality of these patients at 1 year. * Determine the overall survival of these patients at 1 year. OUTLINE: This is a prospective, multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIR) epitope mismatch (yes \[experimental\] vs no \[control\]). * Myeloablative preparative regimen: Patients undergo total body irradiation twice daily on days -10 and -9 and receive thiotepa intravenously (IV) over 4 hours on days -8 and -7, fludarabine phosphate IV over 30-60 minutes on days -7 to -3, and antithymocyte globulin IV over 4-6 hours on days -5 to -2. * Allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) transplantation: Patients undergo filgrastim (G-CSF)-mobilized, T-cell-depleted, CD34+-selected allogeneic PBSC transplantation on day 0. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed periodically for at least 1 year.