The combination of gallium nitrate, rituximab and dexamethasone is effective and safe as a salvage regimen for diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

17510 Background: More than 56,000 new cases of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL) will be diagnosed this year in the United States. As our aging patient population develops worsening performance status and co-morbidities, it seems appropriate to develop effective lymphoma treatments, which have fewer toxicities and lower costs for administration. One approach is to combine non-myelosuppressive therapies. One non-myelosuppressive agent, which has efficacy in lymphoma, is gallium nitrate. Investigation of gallium nitrate for cancer treatment dates back to the 1970’s and it has been shown to inhibit ribonucleotide reductase and bind transferrin and potentially complex with transferrin and/or transferrin receptor, which is highly expressed in intermediate and aggressive histology lymphomas. It appears that the binding of the transferrin receptor on the lymphocyte as well as its inhibition of ribonucleotide reductase, eventually impairs iron metabolism, which is a necessary component of the intracellular cytochrome...