Conditions: Graft Versus Host Disease
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 2
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
The objective of this study is to evaluate feasibility, toxicity and efficacy of using Rapamycin to prevent chronic graft-versus-host-disease (GVHD) during and after the tacrolimus taper in recipients of allogeneic stem cell transplant.

Our hypothesis is that the T cells that can cause chronic GVHD are suppressed but not eliminated by calcineurin inhibitors. Therefore, when the calcineurin inhibitors are discontinued, the T cells may get activated and result in GVHD. Rapamycin on the other hand will allow anergy formation and thus when discontinued, T cells should not get activated. The schedule is designed to have therapeutic rapamycin levels as the tacrolimus is discontinued. Rapamycin will be continued as a single agent for additional 4 weeks and be tapered off in two weeks.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: None

Interventions: intervention 1: Rapamycin intervention 2: Tacrolimus
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: Rapamycin will be initiated 24 weeks post SCT, while the patient is on Tacrolimus. The initial dose of rapamycin is 12 mg of loading dose, followed by 4 mg daily. The dose will be adjusted to keep trough level at 3-12 ng/dl. Rapamycin will be continued at the therapeutic dose for 4 additional weeks after Tacrolimus is stopped. Rapamycin will then be tapered off over 2 weeks. The patients will be on 50% of steady state dose for one week and 25% of the steady state dose for the last week. intervention 2: Tacrolimus target level is 5-10 ng/dl. Tacrolimus taper will start at 26 weeks post SCT. Tacrolimus will be tapered off over 4-8 weeks. The rate of taper will be 25% every to weeks for patients on 4 mg or more tacrolimus daily. For the patients on 3 mg or less of tacrolimus, the dose will be reduced 1 mg every two weeks, and the last dose will be 1 mg every other day for two weeks.

Protocol document: