[Grant]

Auto followed by an allo - what was your experience?

by Grant on Fri May 15, 2015 3:19 pm

Hi All,

I am 44 years old, and had an auto stem cell transplant in January this year which went really well. The doctor is seemingly happy with the results, and we are now planning on following this up with an allo transplant (medical aid willing) because my understanding is that this is the only potential cure for myeloma.

The way my doc explained it to me, is that by importing someone else's immune system, there is a chance (not sure how big or small) that the new immune system will recognise the cancer cells as rogue, and attack them. If I don't have the transplant, the myeloma will definitely come back, but if I do, there is a chance it won't.

I was just wondering how many people have gone this route and what your experiences had been, how it has impacted on you long term, and has any one of you actually been cured by this?

Thanks

Grant

[JPC]

Re: Auto followed by an allo - what was your experience?

by JPC on Fri May 15, 2015 5:20 pm

Hello Grant:

I cannot give you first hand info on your question. However, when we were researching this for my wife's case, we learned that in Germany and some of the other Northern European coun­tries, they rely much more heavily on transplants, including tandem auto, auto / allo, tandem auto / allo, and other permutations. They rely less on novel agents, but do use them.

If you wade through the American Society of Hematology (ASH) presentations for the last two years, you will clearly see that most of the presentations on this subject come out of Germany and nearby countries. You can also get the English language websites of some of the German trans­plant centers to learn about this.

A very experienced German-American myeloma doc told me that it was felt that the overall results between the German approach and the American approach were somewhat similar in terms of key metrics (progression-free survival [PFS] and overall survival [OS]).

Hope this helps. Regards.