RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die.

PURPOSE: Phase II trial to study the effectiveness of oxaliplatin in treating patients who have relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the response rate to oxaliplatin in patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
• Determine the treatment-related toxicity of this drug in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to histologic subtype (indolent vs aggressive).

Patients receive oxaliplatin IV over 2 hours on day 1. Treatment repeats every 21 days for a maximum of 6 courses in the absence of disease progression or unacceptable toxicity.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A maximum of 72 patients will be accrued for this study within 2-3 years.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically or cytologically confirmed recurrent or refractory non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) of any histologic subtype

  • Indolent

    • Follicular small cleaved cell
    • Follicular mixed cell
    • Small lymphocytic
    • Mucosa-associated lymphoid tissue (MALT)
    • Monocytoid B-cell
    • Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia

  • Aggressive

    • Follicular large cell
    • Diffuse large cell
    • Immunoblastic
    • Mantle cell
    • Ki-1+ NHL
    • Peripheral T-cell
    • Angiocentric and angioimmunoblastic
    • Transformed lymphoma
• Bidimensionally measurable disease

• No more than 3 prior treatment regimens as follows:

  • Primary radiotherapy is 1 regimen
  • Combined therapy with radiotherapy and chemotherapy is 1 regimen
  • Alternating therapy is 1 regimen
• No known brain metastases

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 18 and over

Performance status:

• ECOG 0-2
• Karnofsky 50-100%

Life expectancy:

• Not specified

Hematopoietic:

• WBC count at least 3,000/mm^3
• Absolute neutrophil count at least 1,500/mm^3
• Platelet count at least 100,000/mm^3

Hepatic:

• Bilirubin normal
• SGOT/SGPT no greater than 2.5 times upper limit of normal

Renal:

• Creatinine normal OR
• Creatinine clearance at least 60 mL/min

Cardiovascular:

• No symptomatic congestive heart failure
• No unstable angina pectoris
• No cardiac arrhythmia

Other:

• No neuropathy greater than grade 1
• No history of allergy to platinum compounds or antiemetics
• No uncontrolled illness
• No active infection
• Not pregnant or nursing
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• No concurrent colony-stimulating factors during first course of therapy

Chemotherapy:

• See Disease Characteristics
• At least 4 weeks since prior chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• Not specified

Radiotherapy:

• See Disease Characteristics
• At least 4 weeks since prior radiotherapy

Other:

• No other concurrent investigational drugs
• No concurrent antiretroviral therapy for HIV-positive patients