Recent advances and research progress regarding monoclonal antibodies for chronic graft-versus-host disease

Chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) is one of the leading causes of mortality following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT), with only 50 % of patients responding to conventional corticosteroids with or without calcineurin inhibitors. Monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), such as CD20 mAbs, are the first drugs to demonstrate greater efficacy than corticosteroids in first-line treatment of cGVHD. This review provides a comprehensive overview of recent developments in the clinical utilization of mAbs to prevent and treat cGVHD. We also describe the application of drugs with target sites that are identical to or linked to those of cGVHD in autoimmune diseases as potential future treatments for cGVHD. In summary, we collected known evidence concerning the clinical research progress on the use of mAbs in the prevention and treatment of cGVHD and identified drugs with the same target sites in autoimmune diseases for potential future applications in cGVHD, with the goal of providing suggestions and inspiration for optimizing cGVHD treatment strategies and research directions.