The combination of lenalidomide and rituximab overcomes prior rituximab resistance in patients with indolent B-cell and mantle cell lymphomas, a recent study published in the journal Clinical Cancer Research has shown.
For the single-center, phase II study, researchers sought to investigate whether the addition of lenalidomide, an immunomodulatory agent that enhances antibody-dependent cell-mediated cytotoxicity, could improve clinical outcomes in patients with certain B-cell lymphomas who were previously resistant to rituximab treatment.
Researchers enrolled 50 patients with either indolent B-cell lymphoma or mantle cell lymphoma who were previously rituximab-resistant.
Continue Reading
All patients received lenalidomide 10mg daily for 8 weeks, followed by rituximab 375mg/m2 weekly for 4 weeks. Patients continued to receive lenalidomide during and after rituximab.
RELATED: Disease Progression of Mantle Cell Lymphoma After Ibrutinib Associated with Poor Outcome
Results showed that for the 43 evaluable patients, the overall response rate after 8 weeks of lenalidomide was 30.2% and 62.8% 12 weeks after addition of rituximab to lenalidomide. For all 50 patients, the median progression-free survival was 22.2 months after a median follow-up of 39.2 months.
Researchers found that progression-free survival after receiving this drug combination was significantly longer than the progression-free survival for the standard regimen used to overcome rituximab resistance (22.2 vs. 9.13 months; P = 0.0004).
