Treatment of Hodgkin lymphoma relapse after autologous hematopoietic cell transplantation

Abstract

Despite the high response rate to first-line treatment, approximately 10% of patients with Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) develop primary resistance to chemotherapy, and 10–30% of patients experience relapse. Today, salvage chemotherapy with subsequent autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) remains the standard of care for those patients with relapsed/refractory HL (RRHL). Treating patients with HL who relapse following ASCT continues to be a difficult clinical challenge. For many years, allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation was the only therapeutic option in this patient population. The last decade has brought new treatment options for RRHL patients with immunotherapy, including: brentuximab vedotin anti-CD30 monoclonal antibody, or the checkpoint inhibitors nivolumab and pembrolizumab, or advanced immune therapies such as bispecific antibodies, or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy.