Long-term follow-up of patients with acute myeloid leukemia undergoing allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation after primary induction failure

Abstract

Primary induction failure (PIF) in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) patients is associated with poor outcome, with allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HCT) being the sole curative therapeutic option. Here, we retrospectively evaluated long-term outcomes of 220 AML patients undergoing allogeneic HCT after PIF who never achieved remission, and identified clinical and molecular risk factors associated with treatment response and ultimate prognosis. In this high-risk population, disease-free survival was 25.2% after 5 years and 18.7% after 10 years, while overall survival rates were 29.8% and 21.6% after 5 and 10 years of HCT, respectively. 10-year non-relapse mortality was 32.5%, and 48.8% of patients showed disease relapse within 10 years after allogeneic HCT. Adverse molecular risk features determined at initial diagnosis, poor performance status at the time of allogeneic HCT, and long diagnosis-to-HCT intervals were associated with unfavorable prognosis. Collectively, our data suggests that immediate allogeneic HCT after PIF offers long-term survival and cure in a substantial subset of cases and that high-risk AML patients who never achieved complete response during induction might benefit from early donor search.