Bendamustin in association with Rituximab (BR) in the treatment of patients with relapsed/refractory lymphoid neoplasm. A GISL retrospective study

Oral Idarubicin in Maintenance Therapy of Acute Myeloid Leukemia

More than half of all acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) patients are over 60 years. The disease free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) rate of these patients is poor. These unsatisfactory results are associated with adverse cytogenetic characteristics, prior myelods-plasia, adverse phenotypic features, MDR and BCL2 overexpression. Furthermore a large fraction of patients achieving CR early relapses. This is due to two factors: acquired tumor cell drug resistance and tumor re-growth. Maintenance therapy could provide a means to keep leukemic growth under control. We enrolled 31 elderly previous responder patients to standard induction therapy to receive maintenance oral IDA 3mg/m2 daily d…

Successful treatment of resistant thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura/hemolytic uremic syndrome with autologous peripheral blood stem and progenitor (CD34+) cell transplantation

The first-line treatment of thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura-hemolytic uremic syndrome (TTP-HUS syndrome) induces a response and survival rate of approximately 85%, even if a considerable number of patients relapse; nevertheless, a number of these patients are resistant to conventional management. Immunoablation followed by stem cell transplantation has been shown to be capable of inducing remissions in a large spectrum of experimental autoimmune disorders. We report here the case of a 20-year-old male patient with the TTP-HUS syndrome who was resistant to conventional treatment and was transplanted with autologous immunoselected CD34+ PBPC after conditioning with cyclosphosphamide, anti…

Autologous peripheral blood stem and progenitor (CD34+) cell transplantation for systemic lupus erythematosus complicated by Evans syndrome.

Immunoablation followed by allogeneic stem cell (SC) transplantation has been shown to be capable of curing a large spectrum of experimental autoimmune disorders, hereditary and/or induced. Superimposable results, albeit with some exceptions, have been obtained in human patients affected by coincidental autoimmune and blood diseases. However, both because of encouraging experimental results and of the procedure's greater safety, autologous SC are being increasingly utilized worldwide. Case reports are being collected in the registry of the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT)/European League against Rheumatism (EULAR) Autoimmune Disease Stem Cell Project. Among the se…