Medical World News® Inside the Practice: CancerNetwork® and Jeffery Auletta, MD, Discuss Mismatched and Unrelated Donor Stem Cell Transplants in Patients With Acute Leukemias and Myelodysplastic Syndrome

For the latest installment of the Inside the Practice Segment of the Medical World News® broadcast, CancerNetwork® spoke with Jeffery Auletta, MD, senior vice president of Patient Outcomes and Experience for the National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match and chief scientific director of the Center for International Blood and Marrow Transplant Research/National Marrow Donor Program/Be The Match, about finding donors for patients requiring stem cell transplant.

Auletta discusses a study on long-term outcomes in patients receiving an allogeneic stem cell transplant. In the interview, he reviews outcomes with haploidentical matched and mismatched donors. With haploidentical matching, investigators can treat more patients who may not have a matched related or unrelated donor.

These data are especially important in patients who were previously unable to find donors, and may offer the possibility of reducing health disparities in certain patients who have a harder time finding matched unlrelated donors for stem cell transplant.

Additionally, he discusses how people can sign up to become a donor, with Be The Match hosting events like Cheek Week, where potential donors have have their cheek swabbed to see if they’re a suitable donor. Outreach is very important for Be The Match as this study proves patients can benefit from stem cell transplant through unrelated donors.

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences™ Medical World News®, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences™ channels.

Reference

Gooptu M, Romee R, St Martin A, et al. HLA Haploidentical versus Matched Unrelated Donor Transplants with Post-Transplant Cyclophosphamide based prophylaxis Blood. Published April 13, 2021. doi:10.1182/blood.2021011281