Impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on hematopoietic cell transplantation and cellular therapies in Europe 2020: a report from the EBMT activity survey

Jakob R Passweg,Selim Corbacioglu,Christian Chabannon,Ibrahim Yakoub-Agha,Mohamad Mohty,Rafael De La Cámara,Bénédicte Neven,Anna Sureda,Harry Dolstra,Bertram Glass,Helen Baldomero,Régis Peffault De Latour,John A Snowden,Zinaida Perić,Raffaella Greco,For The European Society For Blood And Marrow Transplantation (Ebmt) ,Nicolaus Kröger

doi:10.1038/s41409-022-01604-x

Abstract

In 2020, 45,364 HCT in 41,016 patients, 18,796 (41%) allogeneic and 26,568 (59%) autologous in 690 centers were reported. Changes observed were as follows: total number of HCT −6.5%, allogeneic HCT −5.1%, autologous HCT −7.5%, and were more pronounced in non-malignant disorders for allogeneic HCT and in autoimmune disease for autologous HCT. Main indications were myeloid malignancies 10,441 (25%), lymphoid malignancies 26,120 (64%) and non-malignant disorders 2532 (6%). A continued growth in CAR-T cellular therapies to 1874 (+65%) patients in 2020 was observed. In allogeneic HCT, the use of haploidentical donors increased while use of unrelated and sibling donors decreased. Cord blood HCT increased by 11.7% for the first time since 2012. There was a significant increase in the use of non-myeloablative but a drop in myeloablative conditioning and in use of marrow as stem cell source. We interpreted these changes as being due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic starting early in 2020 in Europe and provided additional data reflecting the varying impact of the pandemic across selected countries and larger cities. The transplant community confronted with the pandemic challenge, continued in providing patients access to treatment. This annual report of the EBMT reflects current activities useful for health care planning.

Highlights

The European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) published first in 1990 [1] a survey describing activity in hematopoietic stem cell transplant centers in Europe that was published annually thereafter
After 30 years of continuous growth, a decrease in annual activity was seen for the first time in both allogeneic and autologous Hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT), as the medical community entered the first year of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic
In autologous HCT a decrease was seen for all indications, while in allogeneic HCT the decrease was limited to unrelated donor and matched sibling donor transplantation but not the use of haploidentical donor transplantation, and to the use of myeloablative conditioning but not non-myeloablative conditioning

Summary

Introduction

The European Society for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) published first in 1990 [1] a survey describing activity in hematopoietic stem cell transplant centers in Europe that was published annually thereafter. Patients who received their first transplant in the survey year are reported in the main table by disease, donor type and stem cell source. Hematopoietic advanced cellular therapies other than hematopoietic cell transplantation Centers were requested to report all patients receiving cellular therapies other than HCT in 2020.

Results

Conclusion