Awareness in Action: How the EBMT Lymphoma Working Party Is Making a Difference

As the World Lymphoma Awareness Day (WLAD) 2026 approaches, we want to address a short message to the community as a team. The theme of this year’s WLAD: “Navigating Lymphoma and CLL Together” resonates particularly for us. 

Together with a dedicated team of haematologists, nurses, data managers, statisticians, study coordinators and many more, we are committed to improve medical care, survival and quality of life of patients after cellular therapy or stem cell transplantation.

In the last decade, targeted and T cell engaging therapies literally revolutionised the treatment of lymphoma and CLL. From incurable diseases we switched to long term control and functional cure, from unlimited “until progression or unacceptable toxicity” medications, we moved to fixed duration shorter exposure to drugs for better efficacy and tolerability. 

As a Lymphoma Working Party of a cellular therapy society, we focus on autologous and allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation as well as CAR-T cell therapy applied to all types of lymphoma. We use the data reported in the EBMT Registry over the years from hundreds thousands patients across all EBMT centres to identify which therapies are most likely to help, at which stage of the disease and how they should be performed.

Specifically to give only some examples, we published high level publications on major and rare T cell lymphoma entities to provide evidence-based harmonised guidelines^1–6.

For Hodgkin lymphoma, we reported major improvements in post-transplant outcomes in recent years, a large contemporary cohort in the era of checkpoint inhibitors in collaboration with CIBMTR, and proposed evidence-based harmonised guidelines. ^7–9

We further benchmarked the outcomes of stem cell transplantation for indolent lymphoma including follicular and marginal zone lymphomas as well as Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia in articles that are in press or under review.

For B cell non Hodgkin lymphomas, we analysed the outcome of CAR-T cell therapy in different settings such as primary and secondary central nervous system lymphoma¹⁰. We also compared the efficacy of brexucabtagene autoleucel with allogeneic stem cell transplantation in mantle cell lymphoma¹¹, a work that can help clinical decisions even when accessibility of new therapies is not warranted. Ongoing work on other entities and comparison of products will follow in the coming months. 

We are proud of the work accomplished but still committed to improvement of the therapies but also their accessibility worldwide. As we write this message the access of life-saving approved drugs is not warranted to all patients, leading to massive inequalities in the quality of care for lymphoma patients. 

On this day and over the years, we use our work to spread the word again and advocate for better accessibility of cellular therapy for lymphoma in all situations where the science demonstrates their efficacy and safety.

References

1. Damaj, G. et al. Allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation in peripheral T-cell lymphoma: recommendations from the EBMT Practice Harmonisation and Guidelines Committee. Lancet Haematol. 12, e542–e554 (2025).
2. Shumilov, E. et al. Autologous stem cell transplantation in major T‐cell lymphoma entities: An analysis by the EBMT Lymphoma Working Party. HemaSphere 10, e70313 (2026).
3. Berning, P. et al. Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for NK/T-cell lymphoma: an international collaborative analysis. Leukemia 1–10 (2023) doi:10.1038/s41375-023-01924-x.
4. Shumilov, E. et al. Allogeneic stem cell transplantation for major T-cell lymphoma entities: an analysis of the EBMT-lymphoma working party. J. Hematol. Oncol.J Hematol Oncol 19, 17 (2026).
5. Damaj, G. et al. Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplant in cutaneous T-cell lymphomas: recommendations from the EBMT PH&G Committee. Bone Marrow Transplant. 60, 1565–1573 (2025).
6. Karsten, I. E. et al. Haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma: a retrospective analysis of the EBMT Lymphoma Working Party. Lancet Haematol. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2352-3026(26)00147-X (2026) doi:10.1016/S2352-3026(26)00147-X.
7. Bazarbachi, A. et al. Autologous and allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation in adult patients with Hodgkin lymphoma: recommendations from the EBMT Practice Harmonisation and Guidelines Committee and Lymphoma Working Party. Lancet Haematol. 13, e484–e493 (2026).
8. Bazarbachi, A. et al. Haematopoietic cell transplantation for relapsed or refractory classical Hodgkin lymphoma: a retrospective, registry-based cohort study of 19 498 patients from the EBMT Lymphoma Working Group. Lancet Haematol. 13, e519–e532 (2026).
9. Perales, M.-A. et al. Outcomes of allogeneic HCT in Hodgkin lymphoma in the era of checkpoint inhibitors: a joint CIBMTR and EBMT analysis. Blood 146, 1011–1029 (2025).
10. Ossami Saidy, A. et al. Efficacy and safety of CAR T-cell therapy in patients with primary or secondary CNS lymphoma: A study on behalf of the EBMT and the GoCART coalition. HemaSphere 9, e70146 (2025).
11. Liebers, N. et al. Brexucabtagene Autoleucel versus Allogeneic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation in Relapsed and Refractory Mantle Cell Lymphoma. Blood Cancer Discov. 6, 182–190 (2025).