[Progress in therapeutic strategy for malignant lymphoma].

Dramatic progress in therapeutic strategy for malignant lymphoma has been made during recent few years because of the development of new drugs or new therapeutic modalities such as rituximab, purine analogue, purged autologous PBSCT or allogeneic PBSCT by the reduced intensity technique. Rituximab in particular changed the golden standard therapy for previously untreated patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma from CHOP therapy to rituximab-CHOP (R-CHOP) therapy in all risk groups. In follicular lymphoma with no treatment strategies associated with curative potential and median survival in the range of 8 to 13 years, prolonged progression-free survival has been reported by maintenance-use of rituximab, R-CHOP therapy, purine analog, in vivo purged auto-PBSCT by rituximab, or reduced intensity stem-cell transplantation (RIST), although no curable survival benefit has yet been demonstrated by any strategies. Short courses (4 courses) of ABVD followed by involved field irradiation therapy (IFRT) for localized early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma (HL), and full courses (6-8 courses) of ABVD (d) for advanced stage HL are the golden standard therapy for HL, respectively. Clinical trials of new therapies with more efficacy and less toxicity have been undertaken.