What You Should Expect From BI 2536?

Preliminary results of a current protocol by Hoelzer et al. [10] with 42 patients with PMBL showed an inferior CR rate of 69%, but a comparable 3-year OS of 90% in patients younger than 55 years and of 67% in the elderly group (>55 years). However, this difference could be explained http://www.selleckchem.com/products/BI-2536.html by a higher percentage of Stage III�CIV lymphoma of 55% in comparison with 33% in our series. The age adjusted international prognostic index (aaIPI) > 1 in our study with 33.3% was lower than the 61% in the Hoelzer study. Recently, an alternative approach for patients with PMBL and an aaIPI http://www.selleckchem.com/products/Cyclopamine.html as MACOP-B or VACOP-B have been found to be advantageous, especially for PMBL [3, 6, 11�C13]. No relapse occurred later than 5 months after the end of therapy. This goes in line with other reports stating that recurrences occur during the first year and patients with a CR longer than 2 years after diagnosis/treatment are not likely to relapse [14]. All patients with PR in computed tomography (CT) after completion of chemotherapy and radiotherapy are still in follow-up (14�C22 months), in a good condition and without signs of disease progression. In these cases, it was not examined by invasive methods, if residual mass also represents residual disease. As PMBL is often characterized by extensive fibrosis, residual findings are more likely fibrotic tissue than active lymphoma [15]. The impact of positron emission tomography (PET)-CT, especially for residual disease, to enable a risk-adapted stratification and to guide postchemotherapy treatment is under debate [16, 17]. Consolidation radiotherapy is discussed controversially. Some studies have demonstrated that chemotherapy alone shows a similar response, not requiring radiotherapy in all cases [7, 14]. However, a favorable role of radiotherapy (e.g., positive impact on event-free survival) has been demonstrated by others [4, 13]. In our analysis, radiotherapy (66.7% of our patients) was able to improve the remission status of PR patients. If this additional http://www.selleck.cn/products/gsk126.html treatment led to a survival benefit cannot be further analyzed. Randomized studies are needed to test the benefit of radiotherapy. As central nervous system (CNS) relapse is more often observed in PMBL compared with other lymphomas [18, 19] and rituximab inadequately penetrates blood-brain barrier [20], the use of high-dose methotrexate and intrathecal prophylaxis (93% of our patients) might be advantageous. We did not observe any CNS relapses. Nevertheless, the issue of possible over-treatment, especially in patients with low and low-intermediate risk, remains. Patients with BL showed CR in 83.8%.