Holstein SA, Suman VJ, Owzar K, Santo K, Benson DM, Shea TC, Martin T, Silverman M, Isola L, Vij R, Cheson BD, Linker C, Anderson KC, Richardson PG, McCarthy PL
CALGB (Alliance) 100001 was a phase II study evaluating autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT) followed by non-myeloablative allogeneic stem cell transplant (alloSCT) in patients with multiple myeloma who had received no more than 18 months of prior therapy and had experienced no more than one prior progression event. Conditioning for ASCT was with high-dose melphalan (200 mg/m2). The alloSCT reduced-intensity conditioning (RIC) regimen consisted of fludarabine (30 mg/m2/day IV on days -7 through -3) and cyclophosphamide (1 g/m2/day IV on days -4 through -3). The primary objective was to determine the six-month post-alloSCT treatment-related mortality (TRM) rate. Additional objectives included determining the proportion of patients who could complete this tandem ASCT-alloSCT approach in a cooperative group setting, overall response rates, rates of donor chimerism, rates of graft-versus-host (GVHD), disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). Sixty patients were enrolled, of which 57 (95%) completed ASCT and 49 (82%) completed tandem ASCT-alloSCT. The TRM rate was 2% (1/49, 90% CI 0.10-9.3%). Moderate to severe (grade 2-3) acute GVHD was observed in 13 of 49 alloSCT patients (27%). One patient died due to GVHD within 9 months of alloSCT. Twenty-seven of the 49 patients (55%) who underwent alloSCT reported chronic GVHD as either limited (15/49; 31%) or extensive (12/49; 24%) in the first year post-alloSCT and prior to the start of non-protocol therapy for progressive disease. With a median follow-up for survival of 11 years, the median OS time is 6.6 years and the median time to disease progression is 3.6 years. Similar to other studies, this study confirmed that tandem ASCT/alloSCT is associated with durable disease control in a subset of patients. This study demonstrated the feasibility of performing tandem ASCT/alloSCT in a cooperative group setting and determined that a fludarabine/cyclophosphamide RIC regimen is associated with a very low TRM rate.