Teduglutide for treatment-refractory severe intestinal acute graft-versus-host disease - a multicenter survey

Intestinal glucocorticoid-refractory (SR) acute (a) graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) causes high non-relapse mortality (NRM) in patients after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT). Recent preclinical data indicate that acute GVHD causes a loss of intestinal neuroendocrine L-cells leading to reduced levels of glucagon-like peptide-2 (GLP-2). GLP-2 substitution improved GVHD severity and increased Paneth cells and intestinal stem cells in mice. This motivated us to treat patients with refractory intestinal aGHVD using the GLP-2-analogon teduglutide. In this retrospective multicenter survey, 17 patients received teduglutide as salvage-therapy for SR-intestinal aGVHD. The best response (CR or PR) at any time point during and after treatment was 64.7% (11/17) including 41.2% (7/17) CR and 23.5% (4/17) PR. At a median follow-up of 28 weeks after teduglutide 10/17 patients are alive. Most patients experienced an increase of the albumin serum level within 2 months after the first teduglutide dose, including patients who clinically did not respond to teduglutide treatment. No specific teduglutide-related toxicity was observed. Our retrospective analysis suggests that teduglutide is safe and has activity in a fraction of patients with intestinal SR-aGVHD, which needs validation in a prospective trial.