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PTCy and “The Story of the Three Bears”

Bone Marrow Transplantation volume 56, pages 765–766 (2021)Cite this article

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In this issue of Bone Marrow Transplantation, Sugita et al. [1] report results of two prospective multicenter studies conducted by the Japan Study Group for Cell Therapy and Transplantation that evaluate the safety and efficacy of dose-reduced posttransplant cyclophosphamide (PTCy) after reduced intensity conditioning-based human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-haploidentical peripheral blood stem cell transplantation. Authors document feasibility of such an approach and report key efficacy metrics that largely align with previously published data using PTCy-based allografting in similar setting. This study adds to the growing evidence that the PTCy platform can be further optimized to allow improved transplant outcomes.

PTCy has come a long way from the initial preclinical studies describing its role in establishing immune tolerance [2]. These findings paved the way for the effective use of haploidentical donors without compromising acute graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) control, while enhancing chronic GVHD protection when compared to those historically observed with matched sibling transplant procedures [3]. Further work has documented its benefit across distinct matching strategies (matched and mismatched related and unrelated donors [4, 5]), graft sources (bone marrow and PBSC [3, 6]), disease indications (malignant and non-malignant hematologic entities [7]), and pre-existing risk factors for exuberant graft-versus-host disease (such as antecedent use of immune checkpoint blockade [8,9,10]).

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Hematologic Malignancies, University of Utah Huntsman Cancer Institute, Salt Lake City, UT, USA

    Vedran Radojcic

  2. Division of Hematologic Malignancies, Department of Oncology, Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Leo Luznik

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  1. Vedran Radojcic
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Correspondence to Vedran Radojcic.

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VR—Consultant: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. LL—Consultant/Advisory Board: AbbVie, Precision Biosciences, Talaris; Research Support: Genentech and Merck; Patent Holder: WindMiL Therapeutics.

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Radojcic, V., Luznik, L. PTCy and “The Story of the Three Bears”. Bone Marrow Transplant 56, 765–766 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41409-020-01123-7

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