Novel approaches to acute graft-versus-host disease prevention

The field of graft-versus-host disease (GvHD) has experienced significant growth, with increased number of clinical trials and the approval of several agents by the US Food and Drug Administration for both acute and chronic GvHD treatment. In addition, the development of prognostic biomarker algorithms has enabled risk stratification in acute GvHD. However, prevention remains the cornerstone of GvHD management. Notable recent changes include the expansion of donor options with the increased use of haploidentical donor and unrelated donor transplantation, the development of ex vivo selective T-cell depletion strategies, recent approval by the Food and Drug Administration of abatacept for GvHD prevention, and the application of posttransplant cyclophosphamide in matched and mismatched donor settings. In this article, we review the results of recent clinical trials in GvHD prophylaxis and discuss the changes in clinical practice and promising emerging strategies driving the field forward.