A trial looking at lenalidomide for mantle cell lymphoma (EMERGE)

Cancer type:

Blood cancers

Low grade lymphoma

Lymphoma

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 2

This trial looked at lenalidomide for people who had mantle cell non Hodgkin lymphoma. It was for people who had been treated with bortezomib (Velcade).

Doctors often treat mantle cell lymphoma with chemotherapy. If mantle cell lymphoma comes back, doctors are not sure what to treat it with and have few treatments to choose from.

Bortezomib is a type of biological therapy. It is a cancer growth blocker. It stops signals that cancer cells use to divide and grow. Doctors only give bortezomib to people with mantle cell lymphoma as a part of clinical trials.

Lenalidomide is another type of biological therapy. It works mainly by helping the body’s immune system target cancer cells.

The aims of this trial were to find out

If lenalidomide could help people with mantle cell lymphoma after having bortezomib
How safe it was to give lenalidomide to people with mantle cell lymphoma after having bortezomib

Summary of results

The trial team found that lenalidomide could help people with mantle cell lymphoma after treatment with bortezomib.

This was a phase 2 trial. It recruited 134 people. Everyone had lenalidomide.

The researchers were able to assess how well the treatment had worked in 111 people who took part.

They found that

In 4 people (4%) there was no sign of lymphoma (a complete response )
In 7 people (6%) there was an ‘unconfirmed’ complete response
In 26 people (24%) the lymphoma had shrunk
In 39 people (35%) the lymphoma had stayed the same
In 35 people (31%) the lymphoma had got worse

Unconfirmed response means there were no signs of lymphoma on scans and they had no symptoms. But they may have had some lymph nodes that, even though they had shrunk, were still larger than normal. Or they may have had an increase in the size or number of bone marrow cells.

The average time that it took for the lymphoma to respond was just over 2 months. The average time before the lymphoma started growing again was just over 16½ months.

The most common side effects were

The trial team concluded that lenalidomide worked well for people with mantle cell lymphoma after having bortezomib.

We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item ) and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.