The August 2020 issue of Pharmacotherapy highlights a themed section on hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) and cellular immunotherapy. Janelle Perkins, Pharm.D., associate professor at the University of South Florida, Taneja College of Pharmacy, Tampa, and Jim Koeller, M.S., professor at the University of Texas College of Pharmacy, San Antonio, are the guest editors. Six reviews of therapeutics and an accompanying editorial provide a comprehensive summary of the current issues in patients undergoing HCT.

Although solid organs, especially the kidneys, liver, and heart, continue to be the most transplanted tissues, patients with certain malignancies are increasingly receiving stem cell transplants from bone marrow, peripheral blood, or umbilical cord blood. The procedures are complex and may involve an autologous transplant of a patient’s own stem cells after chemotherapy and radiotherapy or an allogeneic transplant from a matched donor. Prominent examples of complications that can arise after transplantation include acute and chronic graft-vs.-host disease and disease relapse. CAR T-cell therapy is a variation of HCT in which a patient’s own T cells or those from a healthy donor are genetically altered and infused into a patient to act in a cytotoxic manner toward targeted antigens on tumor cells. Each of these procedures is fraught with potential complications that require careful management of pharmacotherapy.

Meanwhile, the population of HCT recipients continues to increase, with improved outcomes. Posttransplant management can involve multiple therapeutic regimens, including immunosuppressants, corticosteroids, drugs to prevent infectious complications, monoclonal antibodies, and tyrosine kinase inhibitors. Use of these drugs is discussed in several of this issue’s reviews, together with recent introductions of experimental compounds for HCT. This issue of Pharmacotherapy presents a concise and clear overview of HCT that readers will find insightful.