A novel conditioning regimen of chidamide, cladribine, gemcitabine, and busulfan (chicgb) in the autologous stem cell transplantation of aggressive t‐cell lymphoma

Background: The prognosis of patients with peripheral T-cell (PTCL) or lymphoblastic T-cell lymphoma (T-LBL) remains poor under current conditioning regimens before receiving autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). Methods: Patients with PTCL or T-LBL were enrolled to receiviing ASCT using the conditioning regimen of chidamide, cladribine, gemcitabine and busulfan (ChiCGB). Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET/CT) was used to evaluate the response to ASCT. Overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were employed to assess patient outcome, and adverse events were used to assess the safety of the regimen. The survival curve was estimated via the Kaplan-Meier method. Results: Twenty-five PTCL and 11 T-LBL patients were recruited. The median time to white blood cell (WBC) and platelet engraftments were 10 days (8–13 days) and 13 days (9–31 days), respectively. The 3-year PFS and OS were 81.3 ± 7.2% and 88.5 ± 5.4% for all patients; 92.0 ± 5.4% and 81.2 ± 8.8% for PTCL patients; and both 81.8 ± 11.6% for T-LBL patients, respectively. The 3-year PFS and OS were both 92.9 ± 4.9% for patients with complete response (CR), but 50.0 ± 17.7% and 75.0 ± 15.3% for patients with non-CR, respectively. Infection was the most common non-hematological toxicity, and all toxicities were mild and controllable. Conclusions: ChiCGB was a potentially effective and well-tolerated conditioning regimen to improve the prognosis of patients with aggressive T-cell lymphoma. Future randomized controlled trials are needed to further assess ChiCGB as conditioning regimen for ASCT. Keywords: Aggressive T-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma, Chemotherapy, Stem Cell Transplant No conflicts of interests pertinent to the abstract.