Comparison of Therapies Before Stem Cell Transplantation in Patients With Higher Risk MDS and Oligoblastic AML

Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (alloHCT) is considered the only potentially curative treatment option for MDS patients and is therefore often considered the standard treatment for mainly higher-risk MDS patients up to the age of 75 years. One common approach to "bridge" higher-risk MDS from the time of diagnosis to transplantation is a treatment with hypomethylating agents such as azacitidine due to its anticipated low toxicity profile. Alternative strategies are intensive 7+3 chemotherapy with anthracycline and cytarabine or direct and immediate transplantation. By this strategy the time interval for donor search can be significantly prolonged leading to a higher proportion of success.Nevertheless, not every patient initially eligible for transplantation undergoes this procedure subsequently. A direct prospective comparison of different therapeutic approaches as outlined above versus CPX-351 prior to alloHCT has not been performed so far and is subject of the PALOMA trial. We hypothesize that CPX-351 will lead to higher and more durable response rates including a more favourable safety profile and long-term outcome compared to currently used conventional care regimens approaches prior to alloHCT.