2022 ASH annual meeting

Johannes Schetelig (University Hospital Technical University Dresden, Dresden, Germany) presented results from the phase 3 ASAP trial (NCT02461537), which tested whether intensive chemotherapy before allogeneic haematopoietic stem-cell transplantation (HSCT; RIST group) improved the proportion of patients with complete remission at day 56 after allogeneic HSCT compared with patients either on a watchful wait protocol or treated with disease control therapy before HSCT (DISC group). 272 patients were treated per protocol (median age 61 years [IQR 52–66]): 138 in the DISC group (of which 105 [76%] were managed by watch and wait and 33 (24%) received disease-control therapy) and 134 in the RIST group (of which 62 [46%] reached complete remission before HSCT). Complete remission at day 56 after allogeneic HSCT was reached in 84% of patients in the DISC group and 81% in the RIST group (test for non-inferiority, p=0·047), suggesting that pretransplantation intensive remission induction chemotherapy does not improve treatment success.