Tandem autologous-reduced intensity allogeneic stem cell transplantation in high-risk relapsed Hodgkin lymphoma: a retrospective study of the Lymphoma Working Party—EBMT

Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (ASCT) is curative for a proportion of patients with relapsed/refractory (R/R) Hodgkin lymphoma (HL). However, there is a small group of patients with high-risk of relapse after ASCT that might benefit from other approaches. We conducted a retrospective analysis on 126 patients treated with tandem ASCT-reduced intensity conditioning (RIC)-allogeneic-SCT and reported to the EBMT registry to analyze the efficacy and safety of this approach. Patients were included if they had received an ASCT followed by a planned RIC-SCT in <6 months without relapse between the procedures. The median time between diagnosis and ASCT was 16 months (2–174). The median number of lines prior to ASCT was two (33% of the patients received > 3 lines). Forty-one percent were transplanted with active disease. The median follow-up was 44 months (6–130). Three-year-progression-free survival (PFS), overall survival (OS), incidence of relapse (IR), and non-relapse mortality (NRM) after the tandem were 53% (45–64), 73% (65–81), 34% (24–42), and 13% (8–21), respectively. This is the largest series analyzing the efficacy and safety of a tandem approach in R/R HL. The low NRM and IR with promising PFS and OS suggest that this might be an effective procedure for a high-risk population.