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 arsenic trioxide in treating patients who have relapsed or refractory lymphoma or leukemia.

OBJECTIVES:

• Determine the safety and toxicity profile of arsenic trioxide in patients with relapsed or refractory indolent lymphoma or leukemia.
• Determine the incidence of complete and partial responses in this patient population when treated with this drug.
• Evaluate basic science correlates of this drug's activity and mechanism of action in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is a nonrandomized, open-label study.

Patients receive arsenic trioxide IV over 1-4 hours on days 1-5. Treatment repeats every 21 days for a maximum of 6 courses in the absence of unacceptable toxicity or disease progression. Patients with responding or stable disease may receive 6 additional courses.

Patients are followed every 3 months for up to 2 years.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 16-25 patients will be accrued for this study within 1-1.5 years.

• Leukemia
• Lymphoma

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Diagnosis of relapsed or refractory indolent lymphoma or leukemia

  • B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia/small lymphocytic lymphoma
  • Prolymphocytic leukemia
  • Hairy cell leukemia
  • Lymphoplasmacytoid lymphoma/immunocytoma
  • Grade I or II follicular lymphoma
  • Nodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma
  • Extranodal marginal zone B-cell lymphoma (MALT)
  • Splenic marginal zone lymphoma with or without villous lymphocytes

• Relapsed disease is defined as development of any of the following after a prior response of at least 6 months duration:

  • Lymphadenopathy
  • Splenomegaly
  • Malignant lymphocytosis greater than 5,000/mm^3
  • Infiltration of the bone marrow with malignant lymphocytes

• Refractory disease

  • No partial response (PR) to prior therapy OR
  • Complete response or PR of less than 6 months duration
• Must have received at least 1 prior standard cytotoxic drug regimen, including high-dose chemotherapy
• No known CNS disease

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 18 and over

Performance status:

• Karnofsky 60-100%

Life expectancy:

• More than 12 weeks

Hematopoietic:

• See Disease Characteristics
• Absolute neutrophil count greater than 1,500/mm^3*
• Platelet count greater than 75,000/mm^3*
• No thrombocytopenia secondary to active idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura or anemia secondary to active autoimmune hemolytic anemia NOTE: * Unless cytopenia is due to bone marrow infiltration by lymphoma

Hepatic:

• Bilirubin no greater than 2.0 mg/dL
• SGOT/SGPT no greater than 2.5 times upper limit of normal
• No active viral or autoimmune hepatitis

Renal:

• Creatinine no greater than 2.0 mg/dL

Cardiovascular:

• No history of cardiac arrhythmia
• No myocardial infarction within the past 6 months

Other:

• Not pregnant or nursing
• Negative pregnancy test
• Fertile patients must use effective nonhormonal and barrier methods of contraception
• Sufficient mental capacity to comply with study
• No active serious infections not controlled by antibiotics
• No significant peripheral neuropathy of grade 3 or greater regardless of causality
• HIV negative

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• Not specified

Chemotherapy:

• See Disease Characteristics
• No other concurrent cytotoxic chemotherapy

Endocrine therapy:

• Concurrent glucocorticoids allowed for brief durations

Radiotherapy:

• Prior radiotherapy to individual sites allowed
• No prior total body irradiation
• No concurrent radiotherapy

Surgery:

• Not specified

Other:

• Recovered from prior therapy
• Any number of prior therapies allowed
• No other concurrent investigational agents
• No concurrent amphotericin B