Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for patients with primary cutaneous T-cell lymphoma

There is no standard of care for patients with advanced forms of mycosis fungoides, Sézary syndrome and other less common subtypes of primary cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Expected median survival for such patients with conventional therapy is only 1-4 years. As a result of such dismal prognosis, alternative strategies based on autologous and allogeneic transplantation have been explored, and a relatively small number of case reports and small series communicated to date have provided evidence for the potential role of haematopoietic transplantation in these patients. High-dose radio-chemotherapy and autologous rescue has been shown to induce complete responses in the majority of patients. Disappointingly though, these responses were very short-lived in nearly all cases. On the contrary, the use of allogeneic transplantation has provided solid evidence for an allogeneic GVL effect in these malignancies. In fact, more than two-thirds of the allogeneic transplant recipients reported in the literature experienced long-term durable remissions of more than 3 years, which would appear superior to the expected median survival for such patients. This review summarizes the experience published to date in this setting and highlights main areas that would merit further investigation.