Lymphoma Treatments

More Treatment Options to Better Meet Your Needs

The treatment of lymphoma is complex. That’s why it’s essential to seek care from a team of specialists. Every member of our Lymphoma team has extensive experience in diagnosing and treating lymphoma.

The team includes hematologists/medical oncologists, surgeons, radiation therapy physicians, pharmacists, pathologists, nuclear medicine physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and, in some cases, bone marrow transplant specialists — all working together to give you the best chance of survival and best quality of life.

The treatment plan they develop for you will depend on several things:

  • The precise type and subtype of your lymphoma
  • Any known genetic or molecular characteristic of your cancer
  • How much cancer is present
  • Whether the disease is aggressive or slow-moving, and how far it has spread
  • Symptoms
  • Whether the disease has come back (recurred) after treatment, or not responded to previous treatments
  • Whether you have any additional medical conditions (for example, hearing problems or diabetes)
  • Treatment-related side effects
  • Your age
  • Treatment goals (either cure or long-term disease control and quality of life

Sometimes a combination of treatments works best.

The Lymphoma team holds weekly meetings with members of the Transplant & Cellular Therapy team and research scientists, to review the cases of all patients who might be eligible for new clinical trials or candidates for bone marrow transplant. Your case will be reviewed from many perspectives to ensure that all options have been considered carefully and that the very best treatment plan is created for you.

Types of Treatment

Treatments can vary widely for different lymphoma subtypes. They may include:

Watchful Waiting

Watchful waiting (also called active surveillance): Through careful monitoring, some patients with slow-growing disease may be able to avoid treatment — and its side effects — until the disease begins to progress. If you have a slow-growing lymphoma that is not life-threatening and not causing symptoms, this may be an option for you.

Clinical Trials

Clinical Trials at Roswell Park give eligible patients access to promising new treatments before they are available at most other centers. Clinical trials offer great hope for improving outcomes for lymphoma patients

Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy strengthens your immune system to fight the cancer.

Monoclonal antibody therapy

Most Roswell Park patients with B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphomas receive chemotherapy plus a monoclonal antibody called rituximab (Rituxan®) to fight the lymphoma cells more effectively. Other antibodies targeting different proteins on the surface of the lymphoma cells are also being used to treat patients with different subtypes of NHL.

A new treatment that grew out of research at Roswell Park was approved by the FDA in June 2019 for patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) that is refractory (does not respond to treatment) or recurrent (has returned after treatment) following two previous treatments. Polivy™ is an antibody drug conjugate, which means it combines a drug with a type of immunotherapy called a monoclonal antibody. A monoclonal antibody is a protein made in a laboratory that can zero in on a cancer cell, latch onto it and either kill it directly or deliver chemotherapy or radioactive substances to kill it. Polivy is designed to target CD79b, a protein produced by most of the immune cells affected by B-cell lymphoma. Polivy provides a treatment option for many patients who cannot be treated with other available drugs. Our patients had access to Polivy through clinical trials even before it was FDA-approved, and information generated by those trials led to the drug’s approval.

Immunomodulatory Agents

Immunomodulatory agents stimulate the immune system to destroy cancer cells. Lenalidomide (Revlimid®) is a type of immunomodulatory agent that works well in some patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, by shutting down the growth of new blood vessels that would “feed” the cancer. Research shows that this drug can be an effective choice for B-cell lymphoma patients who are elderly or too sick to go through chemotherapy, or whose disease has not responded to previous treatments.

Lenalidomide also appears to increase the cancer-killing effects of the monoclonal antibody rituximab (Rituxan®). Roswell Park researchers are studying the effectiveness of combining lenalidomide with other drugs to provide an additional treatment choice for patients with lymphoma.

CAR T-cell therapy

CAR T-cell therapy involves collecting your own T-cells, re-engineering them so they are better able to fight your cancer

This involves collecting your own T-cells, re-engineering them so they are better able to fight your cancer, multiplying them into an army of millions and giving them back to you. Roswell Park now offers the FDA-approved CAR T-cell therapies Yescarta™ and Kymriah™ for patients with large B-cell lymphoma or transformed follicular lymphoma that has relapsed (come back after remission) or is refractory (does not respond to treatment).

Targeted Therapies

Targeted therapies are designed to attack the cancer cells only, usually without affecting healthy cells, so they are associated with minimal side effects. Our researchers are working continually to develop new targeted therapies that will help turn the tide for our lymphoma patients, and these are offered through clinical trials.

We offer our patients treatment with targeted antibodies that have been armed with a radioactive atom (radioimmunotherapy) or chemotherapy drugs (drug conjugates). These armed antibodies attach themselves to the lymphoma cells, which are then killed by the radioactivity or by the delivery of the chemotherapy agents inside the cancer cells.

An example of a drug conjugate is brentuximab vedotin, an FDA-approved drug for patients whose Hodgkin lymphoma has progressed (continued to get worse) after a bone marrow transplant, or for patients who cannot undergo transplant and whose disease has not responded after at least two rounds of chemotherapy. Brentuximab vedotin is also used in CD30-expressing non-Hodgkin lymphoma (such as diffuse large B-cell lymphoma, cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and some forms of systemic T-cell lymphoma) that have not responded to standard treatments.

Chemotherapy

More than 40 different chemotherapy drugs are available to treat non-Hodgkin lymphoma; often these are used in various combinations. The choices of drugs and combinations that will work best for you will depend on the specific type of NHL you have, how extensive the disease is, and whether your disease responded to previous therapy or has relapsed (returned after remission).

Radiation Therapy

Radiation is commonly used in the treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma, but this will depend on your specific circumstances. If you have slow-growing NHL, you may receive radiation either by itself or in combination with chemotherapy. Radiation may also be given as an alternative treatment if you cannot tolerate chemotherapy, or it may be combined with high-dose chemotherapy if your disease has relapsed.

Bone Marrow Transplant

Depending on the type of lymphoma and/or the response to initial therapy, a bone marrow transplant (BMT) may be an option. This can cure some people with lymphoma.

Our physicians work closely with Roswell Park’s BMT specialists to monitor the status of all of our lymphoma patients on an ongoing basis, to identify patients who might benefit from the procedure. This helps ensure that everything is in place and ready to go if a transplant should be necessary. We were among the first centers in the world to routinely offer blood and marrow (stem cell transplants), and we consistently have excellent patient survival results.

Learn about clinical research studies available to lymphoma patients at Roswell Park, or call 1-800-ROSWELL (1-800-767-9355).