© 1991 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Original article Radioimmunotherapy of B-cell lymphoma

Summary. Radioimmunotherapy has evolved from an attractive concept to implementation in clinical trials for evaluation of toxicity and efficacy. Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma is a useful setting for evaluation of this novel form of therapy. Groups investigating radioimmunotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma are implementing single high doses and multiple smaller doses of beta emitters 1-131 and Y-90 attached to antibodies. All groups giving mul-tiple small doses observe partial responses to treatment with variable hematopoietic toxicity. Single very high doses have yielded complete responses with hematologic toxicity requiring reinfusion of stored bone marrow. A review of radioimmunotherapy trials for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma with a discussion of pertinent related issues is presented. Key words: lymphoma, radioimmunotherapy, radioisotopes, radiolabeled antibody Since the modern concept of radioimmunotherapy was envisioned in the early 1970s, clinical studies began as trials to use antibodies attached to radioisotopes for imaging sites of metastatic disease. Eventually as these techniques became familiar, clinical trials evolved to utilize radiolabeled antibodies at high specific activitie