[Current treatment strategies for peripheral T-cell lymphoma]

Peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) is a heterogeneous group of aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHLs) with poor prognoses as compared with those of B-cell NHLs. CHOP or CHOP-like regimen has been considered to be the standard treatment for almost all pathological subtypes of PTCL; however, these regimens result in low complete response rate and short progression-free survival (PFS). Due to these insufficient results with CHOP-based chemotherapy, there is an urgent need for more effective and newer therapeutic strategies. The positive results of the ECHELON-2 study, which demonstrated significantly longer PFS with brentuximab vedotin plus CHP therapy in the frontline treatment for CD30-positive PTCLs, have a great impact on our clinical practice. At present, translational research is being actively conducted to elucidate molecular biology in PTCLs, and deep understanding of the underlying molecular mechanism of PTCLs would produce changes in disease classification. Until now, clinical development of novel agents based on the clinical classification has been carried out for all PTCL subtypes, but from now, treatment development based on molecular biology will be strongly required.