Alternative Donor Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation for Pediatric, Adolescent and Young Adult with Hematological Diseases

Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is the only potential curative option for many advanced hematologic diseases. Pediatrics, adolescent and young adult (PAYA) patients overall have less pre-HCT comorbidity or organ toxicity and lower transplant related morbidity and mortality risk compared to older adults. As such, a higher percentage of patients in this age group tend to receive myeloablative conditioning (MAC) over non-myeloablative regimens. Current alternative donor sources when a matched sibling donor (MSD) is not available include matched unrelated (MUD), umbilical cord blood (UCB), and haploidentical (Haplo) donors. While there are accumulating data comparing the HCT outcomes between MUD vs. Haplo or UCB in adult patients, the data are sparse in PAYA patients. In this retrospective study, we reviewed 314 consecutive patients aged 1-39 years who underwent their first allogeneic HCT using MAC at City of Hope between 1/2005-7/2018. Patients who received HCT from a matched sibling donor were excluded. Patients received HCT from either an 8/8 HLA MUD (n=196 [BM= 27%, PBSC= 73%]), UCB (n=83 [single: n=30, double: n=53]) or Haplo (n=35) donor. The most used MAC regimens were fractionated total body irradiation-based (n=234, 74%). All Haplo recipients got post-HCT cyclophosphamide (PTCy) as GVHD prophylaxis. To adjust for the difference in transplant era between UCB (predominantly performed in earlier years) and Haplo (carried out predominantly in more recent years) the comparative analyses were focused on Haplo or UCB vs. MUD. Univariate and multivariable Cox regression models were used to assess the impact of patient, disease, and treatment factors on overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), relapse/progression (RP), and non-relapse mortality (NRM). Median age of patients at the time of HCT was 24 years (range: 0.7-39), with 55% of patients being male. KPS was ≥80% in 88% of the patients and 25% had HCT-CI ≥ 2. The most common diagnoses included: ALL (48%), AML (41%), and MDS/CML (11%). DRI was high/very high in 44% of patients. Groups were balanced in general but patients in the Haplo group had higher HCT-CI (median: 2, p