Preemptive Therapy With CMV-specific T Cells Infusion to Prevent Refractory CMV Infection Post Transplantation

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections remain an important cause of morbidity and mortality in allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant (HSCT) recipients, especially in patients received haploidentical transplantation. During the past decades, prophylactic or preemptive treatment with antiviral drugs has significantly reduce the incidence of early-onset CMV infection. Unfortunately, prolonged antiviral treatment is associated with substantial toxicity and may delay recovery of virus specific immune responses, resulting in an increasing of late-onset CMV disease. To date, adoptive immunotherapies have been developed as treatment alternatives to antiviral agents for CMV infection after HSCT. Studies have demonstrated that prophylactic or preemptive therapy with donor CMV-specific T cells can restore antiviral immunity and clear CMV viremia after transplantation. In this prospective clinical phase I/II trial, we propose to reconstitute antiviral immunity against CMV by preemptive transfer of CMV-specific T cells at an early time point after allogeneic stem cell transplantation. We also propose to demonstrate whether protect against CMV is associated with recovery of CMV-specific T cells.