Scientific report 2024 of the Autoimmune Diseases Working Party (ADWP)

For autoimmune diseases (ADs) not sufficiently responding to state-of-the-art immunosuppressive or biologic therapies, haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) has been successfully implemented as treatment option in carefully selected patients, with endorsement as standard indication for systemic sclerosis and multiple sclerosis from international societies, such as EULAR (Del Galdo et al., Ann Rheum Dis. 2024) and ECTRIMS (Muraro et al., Nat Rev Neurol. 2025). The EBMT Autoimmune Diseases Working Party (ADWP) has been central to development of these approaches. Currently, 4656 patients have been reported to the EBMT registry (Fig. 1).

Recent achievements from our working party include a position paper developed in collaboration the Patient Advocacy Committee (PAC) and Nurses Group of the EBMT on patient related outcome parameters to be considered in HSCT recipients for ADs (Alexander et al., J Allergy Clin Immunol Glob. 2024). Furthermore, we conducted a survey on the centre policy on ATG usage (Ismail et al., Bone Marrow Transplant. 2024) as well as monitoring and managing viral reactivations post-transplantation for ADs (Alexander et al., Bone Marrow Transplant. 2025). In cooperation with the EBMT Chronic Malignancies Working Party, we retrospectively analysed the outcome of patients with VEXAS syndrome undergoing allogeneic HSCT (Gurnari et al., Blood Advances. 2024). 

Recently, innovative cellular therapies (i.e. CAR-T cells, mesenchymal cells, Tregs-based therapies) have been successfully adopted in ADs. To this end, we published an expert-based position statement and clinical practice recommendations from the EBMT Practice Harmonisation and Guidelines Committee on innovative cellular therapies for ADs (Greco et al, EClinicalMedicine. 2024) and provided an update on the role of Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T-Cell Therapy in immune-mediated neurological diseases (Brittain et al., Ann Neurol. 2024). 

The ADWP is dedicated to promoting clinical activities, teaching and translational research on HCT together with innovative cellular therapies as AD treatment. We continued to expand the evidence-base and support best-practice with studies and guidelines, including significant collaborative outputs with the EBMT Working Parties, JACIE, Trainee Committee, PAC and Nurses Group. Education is central in ADWP activities, including an educational meeting on ​“Immunology and Cellular Therapies in Autoimmune Diseases” held in Milano (Fig 2.), and a harmonisation workshop on HSCT in rheumatic diseases that took place in Lille 2024. Moreover, a section specifically designed for ADs was developed within the EBMT e-learning platform with contributions from key experts in the field.