Drugs Limit Deadly Side Effects Of Graft-Versus-Host Disease

A new class of anti-cancer drugs, currently being tested in human clinical trials, reduces the severity of graft-versus-host disease or GVHD — a common and often deadly complication of life-saving bone marrow transplants — without suppressing the immune response required to kill lingering cancer cells. Scientists at the University of Michigan's Comprehensive Cancer Center are the first to study the effect of these drugs, called HDAC inhibitors, in laboratory mice with cancer after the mice received a bone marrow transplant. Results of the U-M study were published online in this week's early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.