Abstract
Background: Spontaneous remission in solid malignancies has been documented. However, spontaneous remission in aggressive diffuse large b cell lymphoma is exceedingly rare. Previous reports of lymphoma remission suggest that not yet fully characterized tumor-intrinsic and microenvironment mechanisms cooperate with spontaneous regression. Case description: Here, we report the case of an 88-year-old white woman with diffuse large b cell lymphoma (follicular lymphoma transformed) who achieved morphologic spontaneous remission 3 months after her diagnostic core biopsy. We examined 16 similar cases of diffuse large b cell lymphoma suggesting that spontaneous remission is preferentially observed in elderly patients soon after their biopsy microtrauma, especially if malignancies are Epstein-Barr virus driven and activated B-cell type. Conclusion: Our case and reported analysis highlight that anti-tumor adaptive T cell responses are potentially augmented in a subset of patients leading to lymphoma regression. In these patients, it is possible that "primed" innate anti-tumor T cell immunity is enhanced in immunogenic lymphoma subtypes after tissue biopsy. Our case and analysis not only reinforce the role of innate T cell anticancer immunity, but also originates potential proof of concept for investigation of unexplored pathways that could favorably impact T cell therapy.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Article number | 28 |
| Journal | Journal of Medical Case Reports |
| Volume | 13 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 1 2019 |
Keywords
- Ageing
- Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
- Inflammation
- Spontaneous regression
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)