Author disclosures Alejandro Ariel Gru is a paid consultant for Seattle Genetics and has an ongoing relationship with Innate Pharma. John Zic is a site principal investigator for clinical trials for products from Elora and Galderma. The other authors report no actual or potential conflicts of interest with regard to this article.
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Federal Practitioner, Frontline Medical Communications Inc., the US Government, or any of its agencies. The manufacturers did not provide equipment or other forms of material support.
John Zic. When would the stem cell transplant discussion start at your institution?
Lauren Pinter-Brown. It starts earlier for a younger patient because even though we do have lots of treatment if someone is aged 20 or30 years, I don’t really have any illusions that I have enough treatment options for them to live a normal lifespan if they have advanced disease. It’s a possibility for any patient when I see that the future options are dwindling, and that I am not going to be able to control the patient’s disease for much longer. Having said that, patients who have tumor-stage disease are among those that don’t do quite as well with allogeneic transplantation; ironically, patients with Sézary syndrome or erythroderma might do a little bit better.
John Zic. Before considering a stem cell transplant for patients with Sézary syndrome, that is erythroderma with significant blood involvement, what other treatment options would you offer?
Marianne Tawa. For low blood-burden disease, we might look at extracorporeal photopheresis as monotherapy or in combination with interferon or bexarotene. For patients with higher blood burden we might recommend low-dose alemtuzumab, especially if they have abundant CD52 expression. We also consider the newly FDA-approved anti-CCR4 antibody treatment, mogamulizumab, for patients presenting with Sézary syndrome. It is generally well tolerated but does have the potential for producing infusion reactions or drug rash.
Romidepsin has efficacy in blood, lymph node, and skin compartments. The primary considerations for patients considering romidepsin are prolonged infusion times and QOL AEs with gastrointestinal and taste disturbances and fatigue.
John Zic. Both of you have brought up an excellent point. This is a disease that while we do not have a good chance of curing, we have a pretty fair chance of controlling, especially if it’s early stage. The data from the stem cell transplant literature indicate that stem cell transplant may be one of the few modalities that we have that may offer a cure.11
Lauren Pinter-Brown. There are patients who are cured with allogeneic transplants; and the very first allogeneic transplants were performed well over 20 years ago. Many patients, even some in my practice, who were among those patients and continue to do extremely well without any evidence of disease. Sometimes when people have allogeneic transplantation, their disease relapse may be in a more indolent form that’s much easier to deal with than their original disease. Even if they’re not cured, the fact that the aggressive disease seems to be at bay may make them much easier to treat.
John Zic. Those are excellent points. You brought up photopheresis as a treatment modality for patients with evolving or early Sézary syndrome and patients with erythrodermic MF can also respond. We have a lot of experience with that at the Nashville VA medical center. We’re one of the few VA hospitals in the US that has a photopheresis unit. But the modality is available at many academic medical centers because it’s a treatment for graft-vs-host disease.
