Tocilizumab for Chronic Graft-versus-Host Disease Treatment

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES: I. Efficacy will be determined by the proportion of patients with failure free survival (FFS) at 6 months. SECONDARY OBJECTIVES: I. Patients achieving a complete response (CR) or partial response (PR) at 6 months based on clinician judged response. II. Patients achieving a CR or PR by objective response measures at 6 months. III. Failure-free survival (FFS) at 1 year. IV. Change in steroid dose from enrollment to 6 months (mo). TERTIARY OBJECTIVES: I. Biologic studies will be done to determine possible mechanisms of response. OUTLINE: Patients receive tocilizumab intravenously (IV) over 1 hour every 2 weeks for 12 weeks (weeks 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 11) and then every 4 weeks for 12 weeks (weeks 13, 17, and 21). After completion of study treatment, patients are followed up at 3 and 6 months.