Editorials and Perspectives haematologica | 2010; 95(8) 1241 Front-line treatment of mantle cell lymphoma

In this issue of the Journal, Gressin et al. 1 publish the results of two phase II trials on newly diagnosed man-tle cell lymphoma (MCL). In the first trial (LM1996), the treatment was infusion based vincristine and doxoru-bicin, oral dexamethasone and chlorambucil (VADC). Elderly patients received eight series while younger patients received six followed by high-dose melphalan and total-body irradiation with autologous stem cell trans-plantation (ASCT). In the subsequent LM2001 trial, younger patients (<65 years) received six cycles of VADC + rituximab (R-VADC) followed by ASCT. The reported outcome following VADC and R-VADC of all patients is about 45 % complete response rate and an over 70 % over-all response rate. There was a significant progression fre