Raphael Teipel

Prediction of hematopoietic stem cell yield after mobilization with granulocyte-colony-stimulating factor in healthy unrelated donors.

The collection of hematopoietic stem cells from the peripheral blood of healthy donors has been established as a highly efficient method. Nevertheless, some donors have a moderate or poor chance of harvest success with standard mobilization regimens.

Anti-CD20 immunotherapy as a bridge to tolerance, after allogeneic stem cell transplantation for patients with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia: results of the CLLX4 trial

Bashford-Rogers, R.J., Nicolaou, K.A., Bartram, J., Goulden, N.J., Loizou, L., Koumas, L., Chi, J., Hubank, M., Kellam, P., Costeas, P.A. & Vassiliou, G.S. (2016) Eye on the B-ALL: B-cell receptor repertoires reveal persistence of numerous B-lymphoblastic leukemia subclones from diagnosis to relapse. Leukemia, 30, 2312– 2321. Bolotin, D.A., Poslavsky, S., Mitrophanov, I., Shugay, M., Mamedov, I.Z., Putintseva, E.V. & Chudakov, D.M. (2015) MiXCR: software for comprehensive adaptive immunity profiling. Nature Methods, 12, 380–381. Ding, L.W., Sun, Q.Y., Tan, K.T., Chien, W., Thippeswamy, A.M., Eng Juh Yeoh, A., Kawamata, N., Nagata, Y., Xiao, J.F., Loh, X.Y., Lin, D.C., Garg, M., Jiang, Y.Y., Xu, L., Lim, S.L., Liu, L.Z., Madan, V., Sanada, M., Fernandez, L.T., Preethi, H., Lill, M., Kantarjian, H.M., Kornblau, S.M., Miyano, S., Liang, D.C., Ogawa, S., Shih, L.Y., Yang, H. & Koeffler, H.P. (2017) Mutational landscape of pediatric acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Cancer Research, 77, 390–400. van Dongen, J.J., Langerak, A.W., Bruggemann, M., Evans, P.A., Hummel, M., Lavender, F.L., Delabesse, E., Davi, F., Schuuring, E., GarciaSanz, R., van Krieken, J.H., Droese, J., Gonzalez, D., Bastard, C., White, H.E., Spaargaren, M., Gonzalez, M., Parreira, A., Smith, J.L., Morgan, G.J., Kneba, M. & Macintyre, E.A. (2003) Design and standardization of PCR primers and protocols for detection of clonal immunoglobulin and T-cell receptor gene recombinations in suspect lymphoproliferations: report of the BIOMED-2 Concerted Action BMH4-CT98-3936. Leukemia, 17, 2257–2317. Gawad, C., Pepin, F., Carlton, V.E., Klinger, M., Logan, A.C., Miklos, D.B., Faham, M., Dahl, G. & Lacayo, N. (2012) Massive evolution of the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus in children with B precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood, 120, 4407–4417. Kim, E., Hurtz, C., Koehrer, S., Wang, Z., Balasubramanian, S., Chang, B.Y., Muschen, M., Davis, R.E. & Burger, J.A. (2017) Ibrutinib inhibits pre-BCR+ B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia progression by targeting BTK and BLK. Blood, 129, 1155–1165. Langerak, A.W. & van Dongen, J.J.M. (2012) Multiple clonal Ig/TCR products: implications for interpretation of clonality findings. Journal of Hematopathology, 5, 35–43. Muschen, M. (2015) Rationale for targeting the pre-B-cell receptor signaling pathway in acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Blood, 125, 3688–3693. Qian, M., Zhang, H., Kham, S.K., Liu, S., Jiang, C., Zhao, X., Lu, Y., Goodings, C., Lin, T.N., Zhang, R., Moriyama, T., Yin, Z., Li, Z., Quah, T.C., Ariffin, H., Tan, A.M., Shen, S., Bhojwani, D., Hu, S., Chen, S., Zheng, H., Pui, C.H., Yeoh, A.E. & Yang, J.J. (2017) Whole-transcriptome sequencing identifies a distinct subtype of acute lymphoblastic leukemia with predominant genomic abnormalities of EP300 and CREBBP. Genome Research, 27, 185–195. van der Velden, V.H., Szczepanski, T., Wijkhuijs, J.M., Hart, P.G., Hoogeveen, P.G., Hop, W.C., van Wering, E.R. & van Dongen, J.J. (2003) Age-related patterns of immunoglobulin and Tcell receptor gene rearrangements in precursorB-ALL: implications for detection of minimal residual disease. Leukemia, 17, 1834–1844.

Validation of the Revised Pretransplant Assessment of Mortality Score in Patients with Acute Myelogenous Leukemia Undergoing Allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

Despite recent advances, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (allo-HSCT) continues to be accompanied by a high rate of morbidity and mortality. Several scores have been developed to predict outcome after allo-HSCT. The recently revised Pretransplant Assessment of Mortality (PAM) score is based on patient age, donor type, disease risk, cytomegalovirus (CMV) serostatus of patient and donor, and forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV1). The aim of this study was to analyze the predictive power of the PAM score in an independent large cohort of patients with acute myelogenous leukemia (AML). We selected adult patients with AML who underwent a first allo-HSCT at the University Hospital of Dresden, a tertiary care hospital with a large transplantation program. All adult patients treated between January 1, 2003, and July 1, 2015, were included. The PAM score was calculated as described previously. Overall survival (OS), cumulative incidence of relapse (CIR), and nonrelapse mortality (NRM) after allo-HSCT were analyzed. Age, AML type, sex match, CMV match, donor type, European Leukemia Net risk classification, type of conditioning, disease stage, and PAM score as a continuous variable were selected a priori for multivariate Cox regression analyses. A total of 544 patients met the inclusion criteria. The median patient age was 57 years. With a median follow-up of 47 months (range, 1 to 161 months), the estimated OS for the whole cohort at 4 years was 43%, with a CIR of 30% and an NRM of 31%. The probability of OS at 4 years was 65% for patients with a PAM score of 0, 52% in those with a PAM score of 1, 33% in those with a PAM score of 2, and 22% in those with a PAM score of 3 (P < .001, log-rank test). Both the CIR and NRM increased with higher PAM scores (P = .005 and P < .001, respectively, Gray test). In multivariate analysis, age (hazard ratio [HR], 1.02 per year; P = .004), disease stage (primary induction failure versus first complete remission (CR1); HR, 1.5; P = .03), and the PAM score (HR 1.04; P = .03) had a significant impact on OS. This is the first independent validation of the revised PAM score allowing for simple and valid estimation of transplantation outcomes. It can serve as an important tool in counseling patients with AML, as well as in designing future trials.

Siltuximab for Multicentric Castleman Disease-Letter.

We read with great interest the article by Deisseroth and colleagues ([1][1]) focusing on the recent global approval of the monoclonal IL6 antibody siltuximab for the treatment of patients with HHV-8-, HIV-negative multicentric Castleman disease (MCD). Up to now, treatment options for this rare