US Study of UM171-Expanded CB in Patients With High Risk Leukemia/Myelodysplasia

Cord blood (CB) transplants are an option for patients lacking an HLA identical donor but are hampered by low cell dose, prolonged aplasia and high transplant related mortality. UM171, a novel and potent agonist of hematopoietic stem cell self renewal could solve this major limitation, allowing for CB's important qualities as lower risk of chronic GVHD and relapse to prevail. In a previous trial (NCT02668315), the CB expansion protocol using the ECT-001-CB technology (UM171 molecule) has proven to be technically feasible and safe. UM171 expanded CB was associated with a median neutrophil recovery at day (D)+18 post transplant. Amongst 22 patients who received a single UM171 CB transplant with a median follow-up of 18 months, risk of TRM (5%) and grade 3-4 acute GVHD (10%) were low. There was no moderate-severe chronic GVHD. Thus, overall and progression free survival at 12 months were impressive at 90% and 74%, respectively. The UM171 expansion protocol allowed access to smaller, better HLA matched CBs as \>80% of patients received a 6-7/8 HLA matched CB. Interestingly there were patients with high-risk hematologic malignancies and multiple comorbidities (5 patients who had already failed an allogeneic transplant and 5 patients with refractory/relapsed acute leukemia/aggressive lymphoma). Despite this high risk population, progression was 20% at 12 months. This new study seeks to test a similar strategy in a group of patients with high risk acute leukemia/myelodysplasia.