Myeloablative conditioning regimens with combined of haploidentical and cord blood transplantation for myelodysplastic syndrome patients.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the strategy of haploidentical (HID) stem cell combined with a small doses of umbilical cord blood (UCB) from a third-party donor transplantation (haplo-cord transplant) for treatment of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS), by comparing with identical-sibling donor (ISD) transplantation. Eighty-five patients were included between January 2012 and December 2015, with a median 40 years old. Forty-eight patients received haplo-cord transplant and 37 patients received ISD transplant. Haplograft engraftment succeeded in all haplo-cord patients. For haplo-cord and ISD transplantation, adjusted cumulative incidences of grades 2-4 acute GvHD at 100 days were 27 and 11% (P=0.059); adjusted cumulative incidences of chronic GvHD at 2 years were 22 and 34% (P=0.215). The 2-year adjusted probabilities of overall survival were 64 and 70% (P=0.518), and of relapse-free survival were 56 and 66% (P=0.306). The 2-year adjusted cumulative incidences of relapse were 12 and 14% (P=0.743), and of non-relapse mortality were 33 and 23% (P=0.291). In conclusion, haplo-cord-HSCT achieves outcomes similar to those of ISD-HSCT for MDS and the haplo-cord-HSCT may potentially improve the outcome of HID- and UCB-HSCT alone. Thus, the haplo-cord transplantation may be a better valid alternative for MDS when an ISD is not available.