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

PURPOSE: Clinical trial to study the effectiveness of 506U78 in treating patients who have relapsed or refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia or T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma.

OBJECTIVES:

• Provide an investigational agent, 506U78, to physicians for the management of individual patients with relapsed or refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic (lymphocytic) leukemia or T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma who are not candidates for entry onto ongoing research clinical trials of higher priority.
• Evaluate the toxic effects of 506U78 when administered as a 2 hour IV infusion 3 days a week every 21 days in these patients.
• Evaluate the antitumor efficacy of this regimen in terms of rate of complete responses in these patients.

OUTLINE: Patients receive 506U78 over 2 hours on days 1, 3, and 5. Treatment repeats every 21 days for a maximum of 12 courses in the absence of unacceptable toxicity or disease progression.

Patients are followed every 3 months for one year and then every 6 months until death.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A minimum of 25 patients will be accrued for this study.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically confirmed relapsed or refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia or T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma

  • Tumor cells should exhibit phenotypic characteristics of these diseases

• No CNS involvement requiring intrathecal or craniospinal radiotherapy

• Must not be eligible for Intergroup, Cooperative Group, or local research studies of higher priority

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

Age:

• 16 and over

Performance status:

• ECOG 0-3 OR
• Karnofsky 40-100%

Life expectancy:

• Not specified

Hematopoietic:

• Not specified

Hepatic:

• Bilirubin no greater than 2.0 mg/dL

Renal:

• Creatinine no greater than 1.5 mg/dL OR
• Creatinine clearance at least 50 mL/min

Other:

• No neuropathy grade 2 or higher
• No history of significant neurological toxicity (grade 2 or greater) associated with prior chemotherapy or radiotherapy
• No active seizure disorder
• No active infection
• No other active concurrent malignancy except curatively treated basal cell carcinoma or carcinoma in situ of the cervix
• Not pregnant or nursing
• Fertile patients must use effective contraception

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

Biologic therapy:

• Prior bone marrow transplantation allowed
• No concurrent allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Chemotherapy:

• At least 3 weeks since prior chemotherapy (6 weeks for nitrosourea or mitomycin) and recovered
• No prior 506U78

Endocrine therapy:

• No concurrent systemic steroid therapy

Radiotherapy:

• See Disease Characteristics
• Prior radiotherapy allowed

Surgery:

• Not specified

Other:

• No other concurrent investigational therapy
• No concurrent treatment for seizures