A study of 70 patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) undergoing non-myeloablative hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) demonstrated that a majority can achieve 5-year survival and can discontinue immunosuppressive medications.
Patients were a median age of 57 years (range, 32-75) and underwent HCT using related (n=35) or unrelated (n=35) donors. The non-myeloablative conditioning regimen was 2 Gy total body irradiation alone or combined with fludarabine with or without rituximab.
Twenty-eight patients had received a prior autologous transplant, 7 had a tandem autologous/allogeneic procedure, and 35 patients had no prior autologous transplant. Twenty-five patients (36%) had relapsed/refractory disease at time of transplant.
Five-year overall survival (OS) was 55%. Among 33 patients with sufficient follow up, 10-year OS was 44%. At last follow up, 80% of surviving patients were off immunosuppression, with a median time to immunosuppression cessation of 35 months (range, 1-95).