STEM CELLTRANSPLANTATION (R MAZIARZ, SECTION EDITOR) Identification and Utilization of Donor and Recipient Genetic Variants to Predict Survival After HCT: Are We Ready for Primetime?

# The Author(s) 2015. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract Overall survival following hematopoietic cell trans-plantation (HCT) has improved over the past two decades through better patient selection and advances in HLA typing, supportive care, and infection prophylaxis. Nonetheless, mor-tality rates are still unsatisfactory and transplant-related mor-tality remains a major cause of death after unrelated allogeneic HCT. Since there are no known pre-HCT, non-HLA biologic predictors of survival following transplant, for over a decade, scientists have been investigating the role of non-HLA germline genetic variation in survival and treatment-related mortality after HCT. Variation in single nucleotide polymor-phisms (SNPs) has the potential to impact chemotherapy, ra-diation, and immune responses, leading to different post-HCT survival outcomes. In this paper, we address the current knowledge of the contribution of genetic variation to survival following HCTand discuss study design and methodology for investigating HCT survival on a genomic scale