Disease relapse is a major barrier to successful allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Maintenance therapy administered after HCT is a promising strategy to attempt to reduce relapse and improve overall survival. However, many questions and challenges remain regarding this approach, including which patients should receive maintenance therapy, which agents should be used, what the ideal duration of therapy is, and what effect specific agents will have on toxicities, immunological reconstitution and graft-versus-host disease. Clinical trials are ongoing, which should help begin to address some of these issues and it is imperative that the transplantation community continues to collaborate in such trials to best answer these questions.
Keywords: Allogeneic; Maintenance; Pre-emptive; Transplantation.
Copyright © 2016 The American Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.