Fludarabine-based combination therapies for Waldenström's macroglobulinemia.

In Waldenström's macroglobulinemia, treatment is currently reserved for symptomatic patients. For many years, conventional treatment consisted of alkylating agents with or without steroids. In the past decade, fludarabine has proved to be effective in untreated and previously treated patients, even in those who experience primary treatment failure with alkylating agents. Based on in vitro evidence of synergistic effects and on the promising results obtained in other lymphoproliferative disorders, attempts have been made to combine alkylating agents with purine analogues. Encouraging results with high responses have been observed with the association of fludarabine and cyclophosphamide. The addition of an effective and nonmyelosuppressive therapeutic agent such as rituximab to fludarabine-based therapy ameliorates the quality and the response rates. Despite the lack of randomized trials, the recent consensus report indicates that combination therapy either with nucleoside analogues and alkylating agents or with nucleoside analogues and rituximab are reasonable choices for primary therapy.

Plerixafor and G-CSF for PBSC mobilization in patients with lymphoma who failed previous attempts with G-CSF and chemotherapy: a REL (Rete Ematologica Lombarda) experience.

Plerixafor has been previously reported to improve PBSC collection in pts undergoing PBSC mobilization. Aim of the study was to assess the efficacy of plerixafor and G-CSF in pts with lymphoma who failed previous attempts of PBSC mobilization with conventional schemes of chemotherapy+G-CSF. 35 heavily pre-treated lymphoma pts (29 NHL, 6 HL) classified as "poor mobilizers" were enrolled in a program of compassionate use of plerixafor in 7 Italian centres of REL (Rete Ematologica Lombarda). Median number of previous lines of therapy was 3 and median number of previous attempts of mobilizations was 2. The median number of circulating CD34+ cells/µL following plerixafor was 11/µL. It was ≥10/µL in 17 pts and ≥20/µL in 10 pts; 13 were able to collect ≥2×10(6) CD34+ cells/kg with a median of 1 apheresis procedure; 4 pts collected ≥4×10(6) CD34+ cells/kg. A total of 6 pts had proceeded to transplant at the time of analysis. The median dose of PBSCs infused was 4×10(6)/kg and hematopoietic recovery was regular. In conclusion, plerixafor combined with G-CSF allows a collection of adequate number of PBSC in approximately 40% of cases of poor mobilizer, heavily pre-treated pts with lymphoma, who need consolidation with ASCT.