Rasburicase in Preventing Graft-Versus-Host Disease in Patients With Hematologic Cancer or Other Disease Undergoing Donor Stem Cell Transplant

RATIONALE: Rasburicase may be an effective treatment for graft-versus-host disease caused by a donor stem cell transplant. PURPOSE: This clinical trial is studying how well rasburicase works in preventing graft-versus-host disease in patients with hematologic cancer or other disease undergoing donor stem cell transplant.

OBJECTIVES: Primary * To evaluate the incidence and severity of acute graft-vs-host disease (GVHD) in rasburicase-treated patients who will undergo myeloablative human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched related or unrelated donor allogeneic peripheral blood hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (SCT) for hematologic malignancies and compare these outcomes with those of historical controls. Secondary * To evaluate the efficacy (in terms of reduction of uric acid levels) and safety of rasburicase in patients undergoing myeloablative allogeneic SCT. * To evaluate the graft-versus-host and host-versus-graft immune responses in rasburicase-treated patients. OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients receive a conventional myeloablative conditioning regimen consisting of high doses of cyclophosphamide, busulfan, and etoposide, with or without total-body irradiation. Depending on the preparative regimen selected, the conditioning of recipients will take a total of 6 to 7 days. On day 0, patients will receive filgrastim (G-CSF)-mobilized HLA-matched, related, or unrelated donor allogeneic peripheral blood stem cells (unmanipulated). Patients will receive standard graft-vs-host disease prophylaxis consisting of cyclosporine or tacrolimus and methotrexate or sirolimus. Patients will receive rasburicase IV over 30 minutes, beginning on the first day of conditioning therapy, for 5 consecutive days. If after 5 days of rasburicase the patient's uric acid plasma level remains above 5 mg/dL, rasburicase may be continued for up to 7 days in total. Blood is obtained on day 0 and then at 14, 28, and 42 days post-transplant for immunologic studies, including quantitative analysis to follow the recovery of T cells, B cells, natural killer cells, dendritic cells (DC), and monocytes using flow cytometry (FCM); phenotypic analysis of T cells, DC and monocytes by FCM; lymphocyte activation analysis: CD3, CD4, CD8, CD25 2. CD3, CD8, CD71, CD69; DC analysis: CD45, CD14, DR, CD86, CD80 2. CD45, CD14, CD40, CD11c; and in vitro functional studies such as mixed lymphocyte reaction (MLR) and cell-mediated lysis (CML) to assess for the graft-versus-host and host-versus-graft responses. Peripheral blood is collected for chimerism studies on days 28 and 100 post-transplant. After completion of study treatment, patients are followed periodically.