Managing Chronic GvHD in the Era of Personalized Medicine

Hematopoeitic stem cell transplantation (alloHSCT) is the main curative therapy for hematological malignancies and some hematological disorders. The success of the procedure (survival rates have remained at 40-50% for over 2 decades) is hampered by posttransplant complications such as infection and relapse of disease. In addition, patient reaction to the incoming transplant can manifest itself as life-threatening graft-versus-host disease (GvHD), which arises in both acute and chronic forms. It occurs in 40-60% of transplant patients and predicting and preventing GvHD would allow clinicians to tailor systemic immunosuppressive therapy to an individual patient, encourage a curative graft-versus-leukemia response and improve outcomes. Most research into GvHD has concentrated on the acute form while the more complex and multifaceted chronic form has been largely poorly investigated. Chronic GvHD is a multi-organ allo- and autoimmune disorder and is the major cause of non-relapse morbidity and mortality following alloHSCT occurring in 3,000 - 5,000 patients per year worldwide. Gaining new insights into pathogenetic mechanisms of chronic GvHD would allow the development of novel immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory strategies to improve response rates and quality of life of patients afflicted.

We welcome authors to submit Original Research and Review articles focusing on the following subtopics:

• Epidemiology/risk factors for GvHD development
• Predictive, diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers
• Diagnostic criteria and novel diagnostic tools
• Immune dysregulation related to chronic GvHD
• Biologic phenotypes of chronic GvHD
• Novel immunosuppressive and immunomodulatory therapies
• Immunotherapy
• Socioeconomics/impact of chronic GvHD on quality of life

The APCs for some articles in this collection, submitted by COST Action CA1738 members, were financed by the COST Action “Integrated European Network on Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease (cGvHD) (EUROGRAFT) CA17138.

Dr. Inngjerdingen is the CEO of Cellmover AS. Dr. Dickinson is the CEO of Alyciomics. The other topic editors declare no competing interests with regards to the Research Topic theme.