A new hope in the management of hematologic malignancy: immunotherapy

Abstract

In recent years, Hodgkin's and Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma incidence is increasing all over the world. In the United States, lymphomas are the fourth most common malignancies among all. Lymphoid malignancies have a broad spectrum from mild indolent types, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma (CLL), follicular lymphoma(FL), marginal zone lymphoma, and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma to aggressive types such as diffuse large B cell lymphoma (DLBCL), mantle cell lymphoma, Burkitt's lymphoma, peripheral T-cell lymphoma. With better response rates to chemotherapy, longer disease-free survival and overall survival rates, lymphomas have satisfactory treatment results rather than solid organ tumors for oncologists. Throughout history, conventional chemotherapy agents, radiotherapy and their combinations have been used for the treatment of lymphoma. Especially, in the early stages of Hodgkin's lymphoma, a rate of 85-90% complete remission and high rate long-term remission can be achieved. However, despite this high response rate, 15-30% of patients are resistant to treatment. With current therapiesresponse rate and persistent long-term remission rate in Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas are around 50%. Therefore, new therapeutic approaches such as immunotherapy and the using of cytotoxic properties of T cells against tumor has been developed and used in recent years for the treatment of refractory lymphoma.