treatment

Cyclophosphamide plus cyclosporin, a calcineurin inhibitor, significantly improved graft-vs-host disease (GVHD)–free relapse-free survival (RFS) compared with standard prophylaxis in patients with aggressive blood cancers who are undergoing stem cell transplant from a matched related blood stem cell donor with reduced-intensity or myeloablative conditioning, according to results from the phase 3 BM12 CAST trial (ACTRN12618000505202) presented during the European Hematology Association 2025 Congress.1

Amer Zeidan, MBBS, MHS, is professor of internal medicine at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut. He is also the chief of the Division of Hematologic Malignancies at Yale Cancer Center, New Haven.

Dr. Zeidan spoke with Blood Cancers Today about the phase 1/2 BEXMAB study, which was presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, recently held in Chicago, Illinois, and will be presented at the European Hematology Association (EHA) 2025 Congress in Milan, Italy.

VEXAS (vacuoles, E1 enzyme, X-linked, autoinflammatory, somatic) syndrome is a newly identified monogenic disorder with symptoms including recurrent fever, skin involvement, pulmonary infiltrates, systemic vasculitis, and chondritis.1 Notably, 25-50% of patients also have myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS). VEXAS syndrome often requires high-dose steroids and is resistant to standard immunomodulatory agents.