Center For Hematologic Oncology
Lymphoma Program
The Lymphoma Program provides comprehensive, state-of-the-art care for patients with lymphoid malignancies. Each patient's care combines the best treatments currently available for specific lymphoid tumors with innovative new therapies based on research under way in the program's laboratories and elsewhere.
The program offers patients access to a multidisciplinary team of lymphoma experts with extensive experience caring for patients with lymphoid malignancies. This experience is particularly important because of the complexity of this type of cancer: There are more than 20 tumor types, each with a unique natural history and each requiring a different approach to treatment.
Our Services
The Lymphoma Program provides all services necessary for the care of patients with malignant lymphoid neoplasms. These include:
- evaluation
- second opinions
- diagnosis (pathologic)
- a personalized treatment plan offering the latest therapies
- access to clinical trials offering novel therapies
- stem cell transplantation
- follow-up care
- access to complementary therapies through the Leonard P. Zakim Center for Integrated Therapies
Clinical Research
The goal of the program's clinical research effort is to make the treatment of lymphoid malignancies more effective and specific while also less toxic. Toward that goal, the program makes promising new therapies available to patients with a variety of lymphoid malignancies in a carefully monitored setting.
Current research focuses on targeting tumors with drugs directed against specific molecular targets in lymphoid malignancies, or with antibodies reactive against tumor cell surface proteins, alone or linked to radionucleotides. Another target of therapy is the tumor's "microenvironment" using inhibitors of angiogenesis (new blood vessel development) and stimulators of the immune response.
Many members of the clinical research team also have active programs of laboratory-based investigation in lymphoid malignancies. Researchers work closely with other scientists within Harvard Medical School-affiliated institutions.
