Celia Moreno, Eduardo Ramos-Elbal, Pablo Velasco, Yurena Aguilar, Berta Gonzáález Martínez, Carolina Fuentes, Águeda Molinos, Pilar Guerra-García, Pilar Palomo, Jaime Verdu, Rosa María Adán Pedroso, José Manuel Vagace, Mónica López-Duarte, Alexandra Regueiro, María Tasso, José Luis Dapena, José Antonio Salinas, Samuel Navarro, Francisco Bautista, Álvaro Lassaletta, Francisco Lendínez, Susana Rives, Antonia Pascual, Antonia Rodríguez, José María Pérez-Hurtado, José María Fernández, Antonio Pérez-Martínez, Marta González-Vicent, Cristina Díaz de Heredia, and José Luis Fuster
IntroductionStudies addressing the role of haploidentical as alternative to HLA-matched donors for stem cell transplantation (SCT) often include patients with diverse hematological malignancies in different remission statuses.MethodsWe compared outcomes of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) undergoing SCT in second complete remission (CR2) from haploidentical (n = 25) versus HLA-matched donor (n = 51).ResultsPatients were equally distributed across both groups according to age, immunophenotype, time to and site of relapse, relapse risk-group allocation, and minimal residual disease (MRD) before SCT. Incidence of graft failure, acute graft versus host disease (GVHD), and other early complications did not differ between both groups. We found no differences in overall survival (58.7% versus 59.5%; p = .8), leukemia free survival (LFS) (48% versus 36.4%; p = .5), event free survival (40% versus 34.4%; p = .69), cumulative incidence (CI) of subsequent relapse (28% versus 40.9%; p = .69), treatment related mortality (24% versus 23.6%; p = .83), CI of cGVHD (4.5% versus 18.7%; p = .2), and chronic GVHD-free and leukemia-free survival (44% versus 26.3%; p = .3) after haploidentical donor SCT. Chronic GVHD (HR = 0.09; p=.02) had protective impact, and MRD ≥ 0.01% before SCT (HR = 2.59; p=.01) had unfavorable impact on LFS.DiscussionThese results support the role of haploidentical donor SCT in children with ALL in CR2.