High-dose therapy and bone marrow transplantation in cutaneous T-cell lymphoma

Although most patients who have cutaneous T-cell lymphoma have an indolent clinical course, patients who have cutaneous tumors, lymph node or visceral involvement, or peripheral blood involvement generally have rapidly progressive disease with shorter survival. In those patients with poor prognostic features, conventional combination chemotherapy is usually ineffective. High-dose chemotherapy with autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant (HSCT) results in high remission rates, but the recurrence is inevitable and rapid. Allogeneic HSCT, in contrast, provides durable long-term remissions and is currently the only potentially curative therapy.