A report by Dr. Mohd Yazid Zamri
28th Annual Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Blood and Marrow Transplantation
Firstly, I would like to thank MSH for funding me to Semarang, Jawa Tengah, Indonesia which held from 26th to 29th October 2023. The journey from Malaysia to Semarang took about 3 hours, with transit to Jakarta airport.
The meeting started with introduction topics and host experience and milestone of transplantation on the first day. This is beneficial for participants, especially many of the attendants are medical officers and young physicians. Topics included were technicalities involved in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation such as in donor selection, mobilization of stem cell and conditioning regimens. There was also sharing session on host experience in using Brentuximab in Hodgkin Lymphoma as well as Bruton kinase inhibitor in chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.
Second day was more lectures on complication of transplant such as GVHD, VOD, TMA and graft failure. There was an attractive topic by Iran speaker, on the potential benefit of mesenchymal cell in organ injuries like lung GVHD. Perhaps, there would a good prospective modality in term of managing late complications of transplants, which usually debilitating and affecting survivor’s quality of life. The day ended with poster session and I presented on haploidentical stem cell transplant data.
The third day was the heaviest day, packed with heavy topics such as institutional experience on CAR-T in not only in haematological malignancies, as well as in autoimmune disease. I chose to attend in immunology talk, mainly talk on advances in GVHD management and improving graft versus tumour effect. There was oral presentation from various countries and healthcare centres. Third day was closed with cultural night with stunning performances and decent dinner.
Last day focused on the establishing transplant registry and expanding potential donor pool. Oral presentation was continued and I presented my oral presentation titled impact on chimerism monitoring among allogeneic HSCT patients.
Throughout 4 days conference, I managed to chat with haematologist and researchers from India, Bangladesh and Indonesia. We shared on health systems and challenges in managing haematology disease especially for transplant patients.
Overall, it was a good meeting and crowd. Haematopoietic stem cell transplant has a good prospect to provide cure not only in haematological malignancies, but in non-haematological disease. International sharing on experience and data might be the bridge to overcome the challenges we face in managing transplant patients.