Improved Therapeutic Approaches are Needed to Manage Graft-versus-Host Disease

Allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT) offers a potentially curative therapy for patients suffering from diseases of the haematopoietic system but requires a high level of expertise and is both resource intensive and expensive. A frequent and life-threatening complication is graft-versus-host disease (GvHD). Acute GvHD (aGvHD) generally causes skin, gastrointestinal and liver symptoms, but chronic GvHD (cGvHD) has a different pathophysiology and may affect nearly every organ or tissue of the body. In Europe, GvHD prophylaxis is generally a calcineurin inhibitor in combination with methotrexate, with high-dose systemic steroids used for advanced GvHD treatment. Between 39% and 59% of alloHSCT patients will develop aGvHD and around 36–37% will develop cGvHD. Steroid response decreases with increasing disease severity, which in turn leads to an increase in non-relapse mortality. GvHD imposes a financial burden on healthcare systems, significantly increasing post-alloHSCT costs. Increased GvHD disease severity magnifies this. Balancing immunosuppression to control the GvHD whilst maintaining a degree of immunocompetence against infection is critical. European GvHD guidelines acknowledge the lack of evidence to support a standard second-line therapy, and improved long-term outcomes and quality-of-life (QoL) remain an unmet need. Evidence generation for potential treatments is challenging. Issues to overcome include choice of comparator (extensive off-label usage); blinding; selection of relevant patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs); and rarity of the condition, which may infeasibly increase timescales to achieve clinical and statistical relevance.