Combination Chemotherapy Followed by Peripheral Stem Cell Transplantation in Treating Patients With Mantle Cell Lymphoma

OBJECTIVES: * Determine the long term disease-free survival of patients with mantle cell lymphoma treated with etoposide, carmustine, melphalan, and cytarabine followed by allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell transplantation. * Determine the incidence of molecular remissions in these patients treated with this regimen. * Correlate the persistence of minimal residual disease with clinical outcome in these patients treated with this regimen. * Determine the effect of donor lymphocytes in patients with progressive disease after treatment with this regimen. OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients receive carmustine IV over 2 hours on day -6; etoposide IV over 3 hours and cytarabine IV over 1 hour every 12 hours on days -5 to -2 for a total of 8 doses; and melphalan IV over 20-30 minutes on day -1. Patients undergo allogeneic peripheral blood stem cell (PBSC) transplantation on day 0. Patients also receive tacrolimus IV continuously over 24 hours beginning on day -2 and then orally twice daily until day 120 and methotrexate IV over 30 minutes on days 1, 3, and 6 as graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) prophylaxis. Patients receive sargramostim (GM-CSF) IV or subcutaneously daily beginning on day 7 and continuing until blood counts recover. Patients with no active GVHD who have persistent disease on day 150 or progressive disease at any time after PBSC transplantation receive donor lymphocytes IV over 2 hours. Patients may receive additional donor lymphocytes at least 8 weeks later if disease persists. Patients are followed at 6 and 12 months posttransplantation and then annually for 4 years.