• Issa F Khouri, Peter McLaughlin, Rima M Saliba, Chitra Hosing, Martin Korbling, Ming S Lee, L Jeffrey Medeiros, Luis Fayad, Felipe Samaniego, Amin Alousi, Paolo Anderlini, Daniel Couriel, Marcos de Lima, Sergio Giralt, Sattva S Neelapu, Naoto T Ueno, Barry I Samuels, Fredrick Hagemeister, Larry W Kwak, and Richard E Champlin.
• Department of Stem Cell Transplantation and Cellular Therapy, The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston 77030, USA. ikhouri@mdanderson.org
• Blood. 2008 Jun 15; 111 (12): 5530-6.

AbstractNonmyeloablative stem cell transplantation in patients with follicular lymphoma has been designed to exploit the graft-versus-lymphoma immunity. The long-term effectiveness and toxicity of this strategy, however, is unknown. In this prospective study, we analyzed our 8-year experience. Patients received a conditioning regimen of fludarabine (30 mg/m(2) daily for 3 days), cyclophosphamide (750 mg/m(2) daily for 3 days), and rituximab (375 mg/m(2) for 1 day plus 1000 mg/m(2) for 3 days). They were then given an infusion of human leukocyte antigen-matched hematopoietic cells from related (n = 45) or unrelated donors (n = 2). Tacrolimus and methotrexate were used for graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis. Forty-seven patients were included. All patients experienced complete remission, with only 2 relapses. With a median follow-up time of 60 months (range, 19-94), the estimated survival and progression-free survival rates were 85% and 83%, respectively. All 18 patients who were tested and had evidence of JH/bcl-2 fusion transcripts in the bone marrow at study entry experienced continuous molecular remission. The incidence of grade 2-IV acute GVHD was 11%. Only 5 patients were still undergoing immunosuppressive therapy at the time of last follow-up. We believe that the described results are a step forward toward developing a curative strategy for recurrent follicular lymphoma.

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