American Society of Hematology 2020 Podcast Collection: Graft-Versus-Host Disease

Abstract

David Gray (DG): Managing Editor of Advances in Therapy. Jacopo Mariotti (JM): Bone Marrow Transplantation Unit, Humanitas Research Hospital, Milan. DG: Hello, and welcome to the Adis Rapid? podcast series. We’re bringing you a selection of podcasts focused on the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 2020 Conference, discussing the highlights of the data released during the event. Today’s podcast will be focusing on the graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) data as well as some other interesting findings which were presented at the ASH conference. Speaking to us today is Dr. Jacopo Mariotti from the Bone Marrow Transplantation Unit of Humanitas Research Hospital in Milan. Jacopo, welcome to today’s podcast, and thank you so much for speaking with us. First of all, would you like to give us a brief overview of the things that you’d like to cover today? JM: Good morning first of all, and thank you for inviting me. And in this podcast, of course I will summarize the most relevant presentations held at the 62nd ASH annual meeting for the sessions concerning results in clinical allogeneic transplantation. So I will actually focus my presentation on three different topics: one on GvHD treatment and prophylaxis, the novelties; one about novelties about donor characteristics affecting the transplant’s outcome; and my third one will be studies concerning comparison between allogeneic transplantation versus best available therapy for some hematologic diseases. DG: Fantastic. That sounds brilliant. So to kick us off, what were some of the big announcements in terms of GvHD treatment? JM: So one of the most expected results were the ones concerning the REACH3 trial [1]. So the REACH3 trial is a phase III study comparing ruxolitinib versus best available therapy for steroid-refractory and steroid-dependent chronic GvHD. An important point of this study is that the criteria used for... establishing the diagnosis of steroid-refractory and dependent chronic GvHD, as well as to measure disease response, are the ones that are actually recognized in the literature according to the EBMT (European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation) criteria and the NIH (National Institutes of Health) 2014 criteria. So let’s start from the study design. Patients were accrued with steroid-refractory and steroidchronic GvHD. They’re actually randomized into Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https:// doi.org/10.1007/s12325-021-01706-w.