Miguel Waterhouse

Abstract The major cause of death after allogeneic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation (HSCT) for acute myeloid leukemia (AML) is disease relapse. We investigated the expression of Inhibitory Receptors (IR; PD-1/CTLA-4/TIM-3/LAG-3/2B4/KLRG1/GITR) on T cells infiltrating the bone marrow (BM) of 32 AML patients relapsing (median 251 days) or maintaining complete remission (CR; median 1 year) after HSCT. A higher proportion of early-differentiated Memory Stem (T SCM ) and Central Memory BM-T cells express multiple IR in relapsing patients than in CR patients. Exhausted BM-T cells at relapse display a restricted TCR repertoire, impaired effector functions and leukemia-reactive specificities. In 57 patients, early detection of severely exhausted (PD-1 + Eomes + T-bet − ) BM-T SCM predicts relapse. Accordingly, leukemia-specific T cells in patients prone to relapse display exhaustion markers, absent in patients maintaining long-term CR. These results highlight a wide, though reversible, immunological dysfunction in the BM of AML patients relapsing after HSCT and suggest new therapeutic opportunities for the disease.

Background Minimal residual disease (MRD) and hematopoietic chimerism testing influences clinical decision and therapeutic intervention in patients after allogeneic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). However, treatment approaches to induce complete donor chimerism and MRD negativity can lead to complications such as graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) and marrow aplasia. Therefore, there is a need for comprehensive characterization of the molecular remission status after transplantation. Methods We analyzed 764 samples from 70 patients after HSCT for the simultaneous measurement of chimerism and molecular targets used for MRD testing with a digital PCR (dPCR) platform. Results Mixed chimerism (MC) was detected in 219 samples from 37 patients. The mean percentage of host derived DNA in these clinical samples was 4.3%. Molecular relapse with a positive MRD marker and/or increased WT1 expression was observed in 15 patients. In addition to WT1 overexpression, other MRD positive markers were: NPM1 (Type A, B, K), DNMT3A (R882H), MLL-PTD, IDH1 (R132H) and KRAS (G12S). Increasing MC was observed in 15 patients. This group of patients showed either a positive MRD marker, increased WT1 expression or both. Next, we analyzed whether MC or the molecular target for MRD was first detected. MC and MRD marker positivity in this group was first detected in six and two patients, respectively. In the remaining seven patients MC and MRD positivity was detected simultaneously. Conclusions The combination of MRD and chimerism markers in a dPCR platform represents a practical, sensitive and accurate diagnostic tool for the comprehensive assessment of the molecular remission status of patients undergoing HSCT.