Tobias Berg, Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology at McMaster University, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“In the mid-2010s, Ontario faced a dramatic underutilization of stem cell transplantation for AML. Long wait times and limited transplant capacity meant many eligible patients could not access potentially curative treatment.
Advocacy efforts—most notably the story of Laura Hillier, an 18-year-old AML patient whose public plea exposed dangerous delays and galvanized national attention—helped drive major change. This spurred provincial investments and philanthropic support that improved transplant care across Ontario, including the construction of new transplant units, such as the Ron and Nancy Clark Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapies Unit at Hamilton Health Sciences.
Donor availability has also improved through expanded registries, such as the Canadian Blood Services’ Stem Cell Registry, which widens access for patients across diverse backgrounds.
The resulting increase in transplants for patients with AML created the perfect opportunity to evaluate the real-world impact of increasing transplant access.
Our new study in Blood Cancer Journal —led by Brittany Salter—was conducted as a partnership between the Centre for Discovery in Cancer Research (CDCR) – McMaster University in strong collaboration with the ECRI – Escarpment Cancer Research Institute.
The study shows that greater use of allogeneic donor transplants in AML is associated with improved survival across Ontario. Importantly, even as more patients received transplants, survival among transplant recipients improved substantially over time—reflecting advances in supportive care, donor matching, and safer transplant approaches.
We also found encouraging trends toward improved health equity, though important gaps remain. Transplant regimens are often still quite intense and challenging to apply in older patients, and new strategies are urgently needed to bring curative transplant options to these patients and to those with refractory disease.
This work was made possible through close collaboration with McMaster ICES, which enabled access to province-wide administrative health data. It was supported by a JHCC Foundation Grant from the Hamilton Health Sciences Foundation and by the Marta and Owen Boris Foundation.
Thanks to Hamilton Health Sciences for supporting and featuring our work.”
You can read the full article on Hamilton Health Sciences.
Title: Impact of expanding allogeneic stem cell transplantation on survival in acute myeloid leukemia: a population-based study
Authors: Brittany Salter, Alejandro Garcia-Horton, Irwin Walker, Brian Leber, Kylie Lepic, Hira Mian, Anastasia Gayowsky, Gregory R. Pond, Hsien Seow, Tobias Berg
You can read the full article in Blood Cancer Journal.
