PURPOSE The addition of rituximab to standard chemotherapy has significantly improved survival in patients with lymphoma. Recently, maintenance therapy with rituximab has been shown to prevent relapse and provide survival benefits for patients with follicular or mantle cell lymphoma. However, the effects of rituximab in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) remain unclear. Two new...

BACKGROUND The introduction of rituximab into the treatment of patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas has improved the overall response rate, as well as the response duration and the overall survival of patients with B-cell lymphomas. But only a few studies have addressed the question whether the better response (complete response) and the early introduction of rituximab into the treatment trans...

Analysis of the patterns of gene expression in follicular lymphomas from 24 patients suggested that two groups of tumors might be distinguished. All patients, whose biopsies were obtained before any treatment, were treated with rituximab, a monoclonal antibody directed against the B cell antigen, CD20. Gene expression patterns in the tumors that subsequently failed to respond to rituximab appea...

introduction idiopathic membranous nephropathy (mn) is a common cause of adult nephrotic syndrome. recently, m-type phospholipase a2 receptor (pla2-r) has been discovered as the main podocyte antigen in the pathogenesis of idiopathic mn. materials and methods in this mini review, the author searched english-language medline for the terms “membranous nephropathy”, “rituximab”, and “phospholipase...

PURPOSE The incidence of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), the fifth most common malignancy in the United States, has increased over 70% in the last 30 years. Fifty percent to 75% of patients with low-grade or follicular NHL respond to rituximab therapy. However, responses are generally of limited duration, and complete responses are rare. Preclinical work suggests that human recombinant interleuki...

Purpose: Mantle cell lymphoma (MCL) is a mature B-cell lymphoma considered to be incurable with current treatments, including first-line rituximab in combination with multiagent chemotherapy and for those eligible, high-dose chemotherapy and stem cell support or rituximab maintenance. On the other hand, achieving a complete remission by high-sensitive flow cytometry is associated with prolonged...

BACKGROUND Incorporation of the chimeric CD20 monoclonal antibody rituximab in the treatment schedule of patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma has significantly improved outcome. Despite this success, about half of the patients do not respond to treatment or suffer from a relapse and additional therapy is required. A low CD20-expression level may in part be responsible for resistance against rit...

Many prospective studies and a recent randomized controlled trial have shown that the B-cell-depleting monoclonal antibody, rituximab, safely promotes the remission of nephrotic syndrome in approximately 65% of patients with membranous nephropathy (MN). Mechanistic studies have indicated that rituximab-induced proteinuria reduction is associated with clearance of anti-podocyte antigens phosphol...

INTRODUCTION Rituximab is an emerging treatment for autoimmune hemolytic anemia. We report the case of a patient with a five-year complete hematologic response to a third course of treatment with rituximab. Cases of response to rituximab re-treatments have been reported, but none to our knowledge that failed multiple prior treatments and achieved as durable a response. CASE PRESENTATION A 45-...

Immunotherapy with rituximab (chimeric anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, Rituxan), alone or in conjunction with chemotherapy, has significantly improved the treatment outcome of lymphoma patients. Via an elusive mechanism, a subpopulation of patients becomes unresponsive and/or relapses. To recapitulate various aspects of acquired resistance, rituximab-resistant (RR) clones were established from l...