Comparing clinical outcomes of AHSCT with those of other MS therapies

Summary

There is great interest in the MS community around autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation or AHSCT. This treatment has been used to treat highly active inflammatory MS for over two decades. Evidence suggests that it can be effective in treating people with relapsing remitting MS where they have failed to respond to more conventional disease modifying treatments. While it does appear to be an effective treatment, AHSCT it is also associated with greater short-term risks which have limited its use in MS.

AHSCT is an immunosuppressive chemotherapy treatment combined with reinfusion of blood stem cells to help re-build the immune system. It has a broad suppressive effect on all immune cells, whereas many of the more conventional treatment options are more selective and targeted to a small subset of immune cells.

One important question that is yet to be definitively answered is how AHSCT stacks up as a treatment against the new generation, highly efficacious therapies available for relapsing MS. However, to date there have been limited clinical trials comparing the success rate of AHSCT with more conventional treatments of relapsing remitting MS.

Associate Professor Tomas Kalincik is utilising data gathered through the world’s largest MS clinical database, MSBase as well as other international clinical registers to compare the clinical outcomes of people treated with ASHCT compared with those of similar patients who have been treated with natalizumab, alemtuzumab, fingolimod or mitoxantrone. This will help build a more complete picture of the outcomes of AHSCT.

Updated 1 July 2020