What are the treatment options for graft versus host disease, and how effective are they?

What are the treatment options for graft versus host disease and how effective are they?

There have actually been a couple of GvHD medications approved in the last several years, which has been exciting for the field.

In terms of acute graft versus host disease, our primary mainstay of therapy is actually very high dose steroids.

So very high dose steroids that make, you know, people who've had asthma or bronchitis, you know, this pales in comparison to what we give.

So that's the only thing that's FDA approved.

After steroids fail, we have a medication called ruxolitinib, which is a Jak two inhibitor. And this has been shown to be particularly effective in patients who don't respond frontline to, steroid therapy, but also for some patients with chronic graft versus host disease. In the chronic graph versus host disease realm, we have a couple other therapies as well.

One is a ROCK inhibitor, which has been shown lately to be particularly helpful with patients who have more of a fibrotic presentation of their GvHD.

And very recently, a new, antibody therapy called axatilimab which was just approved by the FDA, which, again, is helpful to patients who have more of this fibrotic, inflammatory, chronic graft versus host disease.

Prior to these therapies, and still now, we tend to use off label indications of other therapies that have been helpful in immunosuppressive. So autoimmune disease and other things, but that's hit or miss.