Allogeneic transplant for peripheral T-cell lymphoma: a sparkle of hope and many questions

The study analyzed outcomes of a consecutive case series of 37 patients with peripheral T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, from related and unrelated donors, using allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (allo-HCT), between the years 2000 and 2007. All patients were pretreated; the majority had either relapsed or progressive disease (n=25, 68%), 13 had cutaneous histologies (CTCL), and all were ineligible for autologous transplant. Fully ablative conditioning regimens were used in 13 patients while 24 patients underwent reduced intensity conditioning (RIC). At five years the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) probabilities were 52.2% and 46.5%, respectively. At the time of analysis, 9 (24.3%) patients had either relapsed (n=6) or progressed (n=3) post allo-HCT. The cumulative incidences of relapse/progression and non-relapse mortality at 5 years were 24.3% and 28.9%. No statistically significant variables for survival or relapse were discovered by univariate Cox-regression analysis of disease and patient characteristics; differences between CTCL and other histologies were not significant. The median follow-up of 64.0 months (range: 16.4–100.4) indicates a mature data-set with probable cure in the survivors. The relapse/progression curves reached and maintained plateaus after 1 year post-transplant, demonstrating that long-term disease control is possible after allo-HCT in PTCL patients with advanced disease.