Lymphoma: looking from the present to the future
The world of lymphoma is rapidly changing. Therefore, it is with great pleasure that we are publishing this special edition of Chinese Clinical Oncology (CCO) to highlight the recent progress. We are honored to include articles not only from Chinese lymphoma experts, but also from an international group of investigators who have been responsible for major advances in the diagnosis, biology, treatment and assessment of response in patients with lymphomas. We hope the readers will share in our excitement about this issue which provides the state-of-the-art for today, but also a vision of the future of lymphomas.
While we use the general term of lymphoma, we are actually including more than 60 entities that differ in their biology, treatment and prognosis. New technology now enables us to insure an accurate diagnosis. Advances in imaging, notably PET-CT scanning, are enabling us to treat patients in a risk-adapted fashion, so that efficacy can be maximized, whilst limiting toxicities. New staging and response criteria will improve patient management and facilitate approval of new drugs by regulatory agencies. Better understanding of the biology of some less common histologies such as NK-T-cell, mantle cell, central nervous system, and primary extranodal B-cell lymphomas will lead to improved strategies for their management. Importantly, an increasing number of new agents that target the cell surface (monoclonal antibodies, antibody-drug conjugates), intracellular pathways (e.g., BTK, PI3K and bcl-2) as well as the microenvironment (immunomodulatory agents, check point inhibitors) are becoming available. They are active and well tolerated and give hope for a chemotherapy-free era.
