Approximately 20% of adult patients with Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) have relapsed/refractory disease, which is characterized by poor overall survival (OS) and virtually no therapeutic options after failure of two lines of chemotherapy, due in part to the peculiarities of tumor cell biology. Improved treatment strategies are an unmet need for these patients. There have been individual attempts to use chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T therapy in this patient population using anti-CD19, CD20, and CD22 cells. In our study, a 42-year-old patient with Burkitt's lymphoma received CAR-T cell therapy after failure of previous treatment, with a complete response at one month (as measured by positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT) scan) and no significant adverse events. However, five months later, the patient experienced a rapid CD19+ relapse and died of disease progression while attempting to repeat CAR-T therapy. We believe that real therapeutic success for this group of patients is possible in the case of CAR-T therapy with a complete response followed by consolidation with hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). Further studies are needed to obtain statistically significant data.

Burkitt's lymphoma, Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, CAR-T therapy, CD19, Relapsing/refractory, Lymphodepleting conditioning