Back to the Future! The Evolving Role of Maintenance Therapy after Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation

AbstractRelapse is a devastating event for patients with hematologic cancers treated with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. In most situations, relapse treatment options are limited. Maintenance therapy offers the possibility of delaying or avoiding disease recurrence, but its role remains unclear in most conditions that we treat with transplantation. Here, Dr. Hourigan presents an overview of minimal residual disease (MRD) measurement in hematologic malignancies and the applicability of MRD-based post-transplantation interventions. Dr. McCarthy reviews current knowledge of maintenance therapy in the autologous transplantation context, with emphasis on immunologic interventions and immune modulation strategies designed to prevent relapse. Dr. de Lima discusses current lines of investigation in disease recurrence prevention after allogeneic transplantation, focusing on acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplastic syndrome

The present and future of measurable residual disease testing in acute myeloid leukemia

Considerable progress has been made in the past several years in the scientific understanding of, and available treatments for, acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Achievement of a conventional remission, evaluated cytomorphologically via small bone marrow samples, is a necessary but not sufficient step toward cure. It is increasingly appreciated that molecular or immunophenotypic methods to identify and quantify measurable residual disease (MRD) – populations of leukemia cells below the cytomorphological detection limit – provide refined information on the quality of response to treatment and prediction of the risk of AML recurrence and leukemia-related deaths. The principles and practices surrounding MRD remain incompletely determined however and the genetic and immunophenotypic heterogeneity of AML may prevent a one-sizefits- all approach. Here, we review the current approaches to MRD testing in AML, discuss strengths and limitations, highlight recent technological advances that may improve such testing, and summarize ongoing initiatives to generate the clinical evidence needed to advance the use of MRD testing in patients with AML

Minimal residual disease prior to allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation in acute myeloid leukemia: a meta-analysis

Minimal residual disease prior to allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation has been associated with increased risk of relapse and death in patients with acute myeloid leukemia, but detection methodologies and results vary widely. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the prognostic role of minimal residual disease detected by polymerase chain reaction or multiparametric flow cytometry before transplant. We identified 19 articles published between January 2005 and June 2016 and extracted hazard ratios for leukemia-free survival, overall survival, and cumulative incidences of relapse and non-relapse mortality. Pre-transplant minimal residual disease was associated with worse leukemia-free survival (HR=2.76 [1.90-4.00]), overall survival (HR=2.36 [1.73-3.22]), and cumulative incidence of relapse (HR=3.65 [2.53-5.27]), but not non-relapse mortality (HR=1.12 [0.81-1.55]). These associations held regardless of detection method, conditioning intensity, and patient age. Adverse cytogenetics was not an independent risk factor for death or relapse. There was more heterogeneity among studies using flow cytometry-based than WT1 polymerase chain reaction-based detection (I(2)=75.1% vs. <0.1% for leukemia-free survival, 67.8% vs. <0.1% for overall survival, and 22.1% vs. <0.1% for cumulative incidence of relapse). These results demonstrate a strong relationship between pre-transplant minimal residual disease and post-transplant relapse and survival. Outcome heterogeneity among studies using flow-based methods may underscore site-specific methodological differences or differences in test performance and interpretation

Repair of Impaired Pulmonary Function Is Possible in Very-Long-Term Allogeneic Stem Cell Transplantation Survivors

AbstractBoth early- and late-onset noninfectious pulmonary injury are important contributors to the nonrelapse mortality seen after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (allo-SCT), particularly in subjects conditioned with high-dose total body irradiation (TBI). To characterize the kinetics of recovery from pulmonary injury in long-term survivors, we collected data on 138 subjects who survived > 3 years (median survival, 10.2 years) after predominantly TBI-based allo-SCT from their HLA-matched siblings. Baseline pulmonary function tests served as the reference for subsequent measurements at 3, 5, 10, and 15 years for each survivor. The only parameter showing a clinically and statistically significant decline post-transplant was adjusted diffusion capacity of lung for carbon monoxide (DLCO), which reached a nadir at 5 years but surprisingly normalized at the 10-year mark. Multivariable modeling identified chronic graft-versus-host disease (P < .02) and abnormal baseline-adjusted DLCO (P < .03) as the only significant factors associated with the decline in adjusted DLCO at 5 years but excluded smoking, conditioning intensity, baseline C-reactive protein level, TBI dose to the lungs, disease, and demographic variables. In conclusion, pulmonary injury as monitored by the adjusted DLCO continues to deteriorate in the first 5 years after allo-SCT but recovers at 10 years

Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation Improves Outcome in Myelodysplastic Syndrome Across High-Risk Genetic Subgroups:Genetic Analysis of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network 1102 Study

PURPOSE:Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) in patients with myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) improves overall survival (OS). We evaluated the impact of MDS genetics on the benefit of HCT in a biological assignment (donor v no donor) study.METHODS:We performed targeted sequencing in 309 patients age 50-75 years with International Prognostic Scoring System (IPSS) intermediate-2 or high-risk MDS, enrolled in the Blood and Marrow Transplant Clinical Trials Network 1102 study and assessed the association of gene mutations with OS. Patients with TP53 mutations were classified as TP53multihit if two alleles were altered (via point mutation, deletion, or copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity).RESULTS:The distribution of gene mutations was similar in the donor and no donor arms, with TP53 (28% v 29%; P =.89), ASXL1 (23% v 29%; P =.37), and SRSF2 (16% v 16%; P =.99) being most common. OS in patients with a TP53 mutation was worse compared with patients without TP53 mutation (21% ± 5% [SE] v 52% ± 4% at 3 years; P &lt;.001). Among those with a TP53 mutation, OS was similar between TP53single versus TP53multihit (22% ± 8% v 20% ± 6% at 3 years; P =.31). Considering HCT as a time-dependent covariate, patients with a TP53 mutation who underwent HCT had improved OS compared with non-HCT treatment (OS at 3 years: 23% ± 7% v 11% ± 7%; P =.04), associated with a hazard ratio of 3.89; 95% CI, 1.87 to 8.12; P &lt;.001 after adjustment for covariates. OS among patients with molecular IPSS (IPSS-M) very high risk without a TP53 mutation was significantly improved if they had a donor (68% ± 10% v 0% ± 12% at 3 years; P =.001).CONCLUSION:HCT improved OS compared with non-HCT treatment in patients with TP53 mutations irrespective of TP53 allelic status. Patients with IPSS-M very high risk without a TP53 mutation had favorable outcomes when a donor was available.</p

Utility of plasma cell-free DNA for <i>de novo</i> detection and quantification of clonal hematopoiesis

Although cell-free DNA (cfDNA) tests have emerged as a potential non-invasive alternative to bone marrow biopsies for monitoring clonal hematopoiesis in hematologic diseases, whether commercial cfDNA assays can be implemented for the detection and quantification of de novo clonal hematopoiesis in place of blood cells is uncertain. In this study, peripheral plasma cfDNA samples available from patients with aplastic anemia (n=25) or myelodysplastic syndromes (n=27) and a healthy cohort (n=107) were screened for somatic variants in genes related to hematologic malignancies using a Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments-certified panel. Results were further compared to DNA sequencing of matched blood cells. In reported results, 85% of healthy subjects, 36% of patients with aplastic anemia and 74% of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes were found to have somatic cfDNA variants, most frequently in DNMT3A, TET2, ASXL1 and SF3B1. However, concordance between cfDNA and blood cell findings was poor for the detection of clonal hematopoiesis when the allele frequency of the variants was <10%, which was mostly observed in the healthy and aplastic anemia cohorts but not in patients with myelodysplastic syndromes. After filtering data for potential artifacts due to low variant allele frequency and sequencing depth, the frequency of clonal hematopoiesis in cfDNA from healthy individuals and patients with aplastic anemia decreased to 52% and 20%, respectively. cfDNA and matched blood cells were not interchangeable for tracking changes in allele burdens as their agreement by Bland-Altman analysis was poor. A commercial cfDNA assay had good performance for de novo detection of clonal hematopoiesis in myelodysplastic syndromes, but showed no advantage over blood cells in diseases with low allele burdens or in healthy individuals

Prediction of HLA genotypes from single-cell transcriptome data

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) locus plays a central role in adaptive immune function and has significant clinical implications for tissue transplant compatibility and allelic disease associations. Studies using bulk-cell RNA sequencing have demonstrated that HLA transcription may be regulated in an allele-specific manner and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has the potential to better characterize these expression patterns. However, quantification of allele-specific expression (ASE) for HLA loci requires sample-specific reference genotyping due to extensive polymorphism. While genotype prediction from bulk RNA sequencing is well described, the feasibility of predicting HLA genotypes directly from single-cell data is unknown. Here we evaluate and expand upon several computational HLA genotyping tools by comparing predictions from human single-cell data to gold-standard, molecular genotyping. The highest 2-field accuracy averaged across all loci was 76% by arcasHLA and increased to 86% using a composite model of multiple genotyping tools. We also developed a highly accurate model (AUC 0.93) for predicting HLA-DRB345 copy number in order to improve genotyping accuracy of the HLA-DRB locus. Genotyping accuracy improved with read depth and was reproducible at repeat sampling. Using a metanalytic approach, we also show that HLA genotypes from PHLAT and OptiType can generate ASE ratios that are highly correlated (R2 = 0.8 and 0.94, respectively) with those derived from gold-standard genotyping

Quantification of measurable residual disease using duplex sequencing in adults with acute myeloid leukemia

The presence of measurable residual disease (MRD) is strongly associated with treatment outcomes in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Despite the correlation with clinical outcomes, MRD assessment has yet to be standardized or routinely incorporated into clinical trials and discrepancies have been observed between different techniques for MRD assessment. In 62 patients with AML, aged 18-60 years, in first complete remission after intensive induction therapy on the randomized phase III SWOG-S0106 clinical trial (clinicaltrials gov. Identifier: NCT00085709), MRD detection by centralized, high-quality multiparametric flow cytometry was compared with a 29-gene panel utilizing duplex sequencing (DS), an ultrasensitive next-generation sequencing method that generates double-stranded consensus sequences to reduce false positive errors. MRD as defined by DS was observed in 22 (35%) patients and was strongly associated with higher rates of relapse (68% vs. 13%; hazard ratio [HR] =8.8; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 3.2-24.5; P<0.001) and decreased survival (32% vs. 82%; HR=5.6; 95% CI: 2.3-13.8; P<0.001) at 5 years. DS MRD strongly outperformed multiparametric flow cytometry MRD, which was observed in ten (16%) patients and marginally associated with higher rates of relapse (50% vs. 30%; HR=2.4; 95% CI: 0.9-6.7; P=0.087) and decreased survival (40% vs. 68%; HR=2.5; 95% CI: 1.0-6.3; P=0.059) at 5 years. Furthermore, the prognostic significance of DS MRD status at the time of remission for subsequent relapse was similar on both randomized arms of the trial. These findings suggest that next-generation sequencing-based AML MRD testing is a powerful tool that could be developed for use in patient management and for early anti-leukemic treatment assessment in clinical trials

Risk classification at diagnosis predicts post-HCT outcomes in intermediate-, adverse-risk, and KMT2A-rearranged AML.

Little is known about whether risk classification at diagnosis predicts post-hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) outcomes for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients. We evaluated 8709 AML patients from the CIBMTR database and, after selection and manual curation of cytogenetics data, 3779 patients in CR1 were included in the final analysis: 2384 with intermediate-risk, 969 with adverse-risk, and 426 with KMT2A-rearranged disease. An adjusted multivariable analysis compared to intermediate-risk patients detected an increased risk of relapse for KMT2A-rearranged and adverse-risk patients (HR 1.27, p = 0.01 and HR 1.71, p < 0.001, respectively). Leukemia-free survival (LFS) was similar for KMT2A and adverse-risk patients (HR 1.26, p = 0.002 and HR 1.47, p < 0.001), as was overall survival (OS) (HR 1.32, p < 0.001 and HR 1.45, p < 0.001). No differences in outcome could be detected when patients were stratified by KMT2A fusion partner. This is the largest study conducted to date on post-HCT outcomes in AML using manually curated cytogenetics for risk stratification. Our work demonstrates that risk classification at diagnosis remains predictive of post-HCT outcomes in AML. It also highlights the critical need to develop novel treatment strategies for patients with KMT2A rearrangements and adverse-risk disease