1 High-Dose Immunosuppressive Therapy and Autologous Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation for Severe Systemic Sclerosis: Long-Term Follow-Up of the U.S. Multicenter Pilot Study

More effective therapeutic strategies are required for patients with poor-prognosis systemic sclerosis (SSc). A phase II, single arm study of high-dose immunosuppressive therapy (HDIT) and autologous CD34-selected hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) was conducted in 34 patients with diffuse cutaneous SSc. HDIT included total body irradiation (800 cGy) with lung shielding, cyclophosphamide (120 mg/kg) and equine antithymocyte globulin (90 mg/kg)