Clinical and molecular remission after allogeneic blood cell transplantation in a patient with mantle-cell lymphoma

Mantle-cell lymphoma (MCL) is a B-cell tumour with a usually poor prognosis, characterized by the proliferation of small cleaved lymphocytes with a diffuse growth pattern. We report a polymerase chain reaction-based analysis of minimal residual disease in a patient who achieved complete remission after allogeneic blood cell transplantation (BCT). Rearrangement of the immunoglobulin heavy-chain genes was used to generate a lymphoma-specific molecular marker. Lymphoma cells were not detectable in a bone marrow sample collected 12 months after BCT. Our findings suggest that allogeneic BCT may offer a curative approach to MCL.