Dr. Shaughnessy Discusses Unanswered Questions in DLBCL

Paul J. Shaughnessy, MD, medical director of adult blood and marrow transplant at the Texas Transplant Institute, discusses unanswered questions in the field of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL).

One challenge lies in treating patients with relapsed/chemotherapy-sensitive DLBCL, says Shaughnessy. The ideal scenario would be treating these patients with more effective regimens that result in less toxicity. Then, the question will become whether or not physicians can mobilize a patient’s stem cells with cytokine-alone mobilization techniques to spare patients from toxicity.

In addition to these challenges, physicians are investigating ways of optimizing methods of peripheral blood stem cell transplantation in addition to developing better preoperative regimens. Moreover, research has turned to ways of inducing faster outcomes, such as using higher graft numbers to get quicker outcomes and manipulating the autologous stem cell graft with higher lymphocyte counts. These are all aspects of care that need to be answered in future prospective studies, says Shaughnessy.