Purpose of review:
novel immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors, bispecific and chimeric antigen receptor T cells are leading to promising responses when treating solid tumors and hematological malignancies. T cell neoplasms include leukemia and lymphomas that are derived from T cells. These are rare diseases with generally poor clinical outcomes. This review describes the rational and preliminary results of these approaches for people with T cell lymphoma and leukemia.
Recent findings:
for T cell neoplasms, despite significant research effort, only few agents, such as monoclonal antibodies and allogeneic stem cell transplantation, showed some clinical activity. One of the major hurdles to targeting T cell neoplasms is that activation or elimination of T cells, either normal or neoplastic, can cause significant toxicity. A need to develop novel safe and effective immunotherapies for T cell neoplasms exists.
Summary:
In this review, we will discuss the rationale for immunotherapy of T cell leukemia and lymphoma and present the most recent therapeutic approaches.