Our policy is to treat patients with slowly progressive disease with oral chlorambucil, cyclophosphamide, or CVP since Adriamycin-based regimens are not curative for this disease. Patients who are symptomatic or have rapidly progressive disease are treated with CHOP, if they are not eligible for cooperative group protocols. Given the aggressive natural history of MCL, most patients will require CHOP-type regimens within two years of diagnosis. Another approach is to administer alpha interferon after conventional chemotherapy to try to prolong remission durations. The utility of novel new anti-CD20 antibody treatments from Idec Corporation and Coulter Corporation for treating mantle cell lymphomas is unclear at the present time, though the CD20 molecule is highly expressed on mantle cell lymphomas.
Patients typically present with advanced stage disease and pursue an aggressive clinical course.
References for Mantle Cell Lymphoma 1. A proposal from the international lymphoma study group. A proposal for unification of morphologic, immunologic and molecular data. Report of the workshop on mantle cell lymphoma. Cliical and pathologic features of a recently characterized subtype of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.