A study of Reolysin alongside lenalidomide or pomalidomide for myeloma (MUK eleven)

Cancer type:

Myeloma

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 1

This study looked at Reolysin with other treatment for people whose myeloma had come back or treatment had stopped working.

The study was open for people to join in 2017 and 2018. The team reported the results in 2022.

More about this trial

Reolysin is a type of targeted cancer treatment. It can help the immune system Open a glossary item recognise and kill cancer cells.

Reolysin is made from a type of virus Open a glossary item called reovirus. Reovirus is common, and most people will have been in contact with it without knowing. It causes only minor symptoms such as coughs, colds and diarrhoea.

Lenalidomide and pomalidomide are both targeted cancer drugs. When this study was done, these were already treatments for myeloma.

Doctors wanted to find out if having Reolysin with lenalidomide or pomalidomide is a useful treatment for myeloma.

The main aims of the study were to find out:

the best dose of Reolysin to use
how well Reolysin works alongside lenalidomide or pomalidomide
more about the side effects

Summary of results

The research team found it more difficult to find people to join this study than they’d hoped. So it closed earlier than planned.

A total of 3 people had treatment as part of this study. They were put into one of two treatment groups at random. The groups were:

Reolysin and lenalidomide
Reolysin and pomalidomide

All 3 people taking part were in the Reolysin and lenalidomide group. This is because of the way people are randomly put into treatment groups. No one had pomalidomide as part of this study.

As there were so few people in the study, the team weren’t able to do a full analysis.

The results about side effects showed that:

no one had a side effect serious enough to suggest the dose of Reolysin was too high
one person had all 6 cycles of treatment as planned
one person decided to stop treatment after 2 cycles because of side effects
one person stopped treatment after 2 cycles because their myeloma got worse

Most side effects were mild or didn’t last long. They included:

increased temperature (pyrexia)
drop in white blood cells causing an increased risk of infection
fever and flu like symptoms
feeling sick
a low level of phosphate in the blood

The results about how well treatment worked showed that:

one person’s myeloma stayed the same for a while
everyone’s myeloma began to get worse between about 7 weeks and 5 months after joining the study

We have more information about the side effects of lenalidomide and pomalidomide in our Cancer drugs section.

Conclusion
The team were not able to draw any firm conclusions from this study because of the small number of people who took part. They did find that having Reolysin with lenalidomide didn’t seem to cause too many side effects.

More detailed information
There is more information about this research in the references below.

Please note, the information we link to here is not in plain English. It has been written for healthcare professionals and researchers.

MUK eleven: Viral Immunotherapy in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma
The ISRCTN registry
Accessed December 2024

MUK eleven
NHS Health Authority Research website
Accessed December 2024

Where this information comes from
We have based this summary on the information in the articles above. As far as we are aware, the results have not been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) or published in a medical journal. We have not analysed the data ourselves. As far as we are aware, the links we list above are active and the articles are free and available to view.