Updated Results of Rituximab Pre- and Post-BEAM with or without 90 Yttrium Ibritumomab Tiuxetan during Autologous Transplant for Diffuse Large B-cell Lymphoma.

Purpose: We evaluated the effect on long-term survival of adding rituximab (R) to BEAM (carmustine, etoposide, cytarabine, and melphalan) conditioning with or without yttrium-90 ibritumomab tiuxetan (90 YIT) in patients with relapsed diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) undergoing autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT). Experimental design: Patients were enrolled on three consecutive phase II clinical trials. Patients received two doses of rituximab (375 and 1,000 mg/m2 ) during mobilization of stem cells, followed by 1,000 mg/m2 on days +1 and +8 after ASCT with R-BEAM or 90 YIT-R-BEAM (90 YIT dose of 0.4 mCi/kg) conditioning. Results: One hundred thirteen patients were enrolled, with 73 receiving R-BEAM and 40 receiving 90 YIT-R-BEAM. All patients had a prior exposure to rituximab. The median follow-up intervals for survivors were 11.8, 8.1, and 4.2 years in the three trials, respectively. The 5-year disease-free survival (DFS) rates were 62% for R-BEAM and 65% for 90 YIT-R-BEAM ( P = 0.82). The 5-year overall survival rates were 73% and 77%, respectively ( P = 0.65). In patients with de novo DLBCL, survival outcomes of the germinal center/activated b-cell histologic subtypes were similar with 5-year OS rates ( P = 0.52) and DFS rates ( P = 0.64), irrespective of their time of relapse (<1 vs. >1 year) after initial induction chemotherapy ( P = 0.97). Conclusions: Administering ASCT with rituximab during stem cell collection and immediately after transplantation induces long-term disease remission and abolishes the negative prognostic impact of cell-of-origin in patients with relapsed DLBCL. The addition of 90 YIT does not confer a further survival benefit. Clin Cancer Res; 24(10); 2304-11. ©2018 AACR .