Workshop on Chronic GvHD Response Criteria 
Planned for Honolulu

“Assessing Response in Chronic GvHD Clinical Trials” is an ASBMT/CIBMTR educational and training workshop that will be held from 2:00 pm to 4:30 pm on Monday, Feb. 20, in Honolulu.

The session will be open to all BMT Tandem Meetings registrants.  The workshop is for principal investigators, transplant specialists, primary care provider nurses or physician assistants and all who are interested in using therapeutic responses as outcome measurements in chronic GvHD clinical trials.

With an interdisciplinary faculty, the 2½-hour session will provide participants an overview of comprehensive response evaluations in chronic GvHD as an opportunity to refine their skills in conducting functional evaluations and organ-specific evaluations of the patient with chronic GvHD using the recently proposed NIH consensus criteria.

Instructional methods will include lecture, skill demonstrations and development, panel discussion and an opportunity to practice evaluating the extent of chronic GVHD using images of actual patients with a range of chronic GVHD manifestations, comparing their ratings with those of experts to refine their accuracy.

Workshop participants also will be provided with a CD-ROM syllabus containing a slide set to promote further use of this information in their own programs and facilities.

The workshop faculty participated in the development of the 2005 NIH Consensus Response Criteria for Clinical Trials in Chronic GvHD:

  • Steven Pavletic, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda – Development and overview of cGvHD response criteria 
  • Mary Flowers, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle – Overview of the new chronic GvHD classification criteria
  • Maria Turner, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda – Dermatologic evaluation in cGvHD 
  • Mark Schubert, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle – Oral evaluation in cGvHD
  • Stella Kim, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston – Ocular evaluation in cGvHD
  • Sandra Mitchel, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda – Evaluation of functional and patient reported outcomes in cGvHD
  • David Jacobsohn, Northwestern University, Chicago – Pediatric modifications of cGvHD response assessments
  • Donna Przepiorka, University of Tennessee – Implementation of response criteria in clinical trials (panel discussion)