• Nicola Piccirillo, Rossana Putzulu, Giuseppina Massini, Alessia Di Giovanni, Sabrina Giammarco, Elisabetta Metafuni, Simona Sica, Gina Zini, and Patrizia Chiusolo.
• Dipartimento di Diagnostica per Immagini, Radioterapia Oncologica ed Ematologia, Fondazione Policlinico A. Gemelli IRCCS, Rome, Italy.
• J Clin Apher. 2021 Feb 1; 36 (1): 118-126.

BackgroundExtracorporeal photopheresis (ECP) is an effective treatment for graft-vs-host-disease (GvHD). Photopheresis can be performed in offline or inline method. The first uses a conventional cell separator for collection of mononuclear-cells that are photoactivated by a separate device and manually reinfused; the second one involves a dedicated device performing the entire procedure (collection, photoactivation and reinfusion).Study Design And MethodsThe objective was to compare the two methods and cell product features to highlight key process, devices performance, and to evaluate ECP clinical response. Patients developing steroid-resistant GvHD underwent ECP as second-line treatment using either inline (Therakos CellEx) or offline system (Terumo BCT Spectra or Optia and UVA PIT system). Data about patients' features, pre-apheresis blood-count, cell product characteristics and clinical response were collected for analysis.ResultsWe evaluated 494 procedures performed on 28 patients from April 2018 to March 2019. The offline procedure allows to achieve greater cell yield, it is characterized by larger processed blood volume, longer runtime, and higher ACD consumption. The inline procedure shows shorter runtime, high mononuclear-cells percentage and low percentage of granulocytes in cell product. We observed a significant difference in cell yields between inline and offline system; furthermore we did not find a significant relationship between cell dose and clinical response.ConclusionInline ECP is fast, highly automated and productive, making it particularly suitable for ECP treatments. Offline ECP collects high cell yields implying longer procedure and greater operator intervention. Our study did not find a significant relationship between cell dose and GVHD response.© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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