ASH 2012: allogeneic stem cell transplantation

Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) is a developing treatment modality, continuously being adapted to disease-specific requirements, and, even more successfully, to the tolerability in a growing target population. Allogeneic HSCT, in particular, is now accessible as a curative treatment for patients that would have been allocated to palliative concepts 1 or 2 decades ago. However, modern pharmacotherapy of neoplastic diseases is advancing, taking advantage of the increasing insight into cancer biology. Therefore, the role of HSCT in the treatment of hematologic malignancies has to be defined and reconsidered in a continuous fashion. At the ASH Meeting 2012, nearly 900 abstracts covered the field of allogeneic HSCT. The short list of abstracts reviewed here was selected according to the authors’ perception of a particular clinical impact. It is aimed to cover the most relevant issues an HSCT-physician is faced with in clinical practice in 2013, namely the management of the elderly patient (typically with acute myeloid leukemia or myelodysplastic syndromes), the limitations regarding access to a suitable donor, and the management of relapse and the most important cause of nonrelapse mortality, graft versus host disease, after allogeneic HSCT.