How Lenalidomide (Revlimid) Works
- Lenalidomide (Revlimid) stimulates the immune system to treat cancer
- It may be an option for people who are too elderly or sick for chemotherapy
- Revlimid is approved for people with follicular lymphoma, marginal zone lymphoma, and mantle cell lymphoma
- It is also combined with the antibody drug, rituximab, to help slow the spread of cancer
Revlimid is a type of drug called an immunomodulator. It stimulates your immune system to treat your cancer. “What we think is that it activates parts of your immune system that may be able to recognize the tumor,” Dr. Michael Jain, medical oncologist at Moffitt Cancer Center, tells SurvivorNet.
Read More- It stimulates your immune system to find and destroy the cancer cells
- It targets and kills lymphoma cells directly
- It shuts down the growth of new blood vessels that feed the tumor
Who Should Try Revlimid?
“This can be a good option, especially in people who are not living very close to comprehensive cancer centers or who are wanting an approach that will not have so much toxicity,” Dr. Jain says. “It’s often used in patients who are perhaps more elderly or more fragile.” Revlimid is also an option for people who’ve had a stem cell transplant or CAR T-cell therapy and their disease has relapsed. It’s approved for people with follicular lymphoma, marginal zone lymphoma, and mantle cell lymphoma. The combination of Revlimid and the monoclonal antibody drug rituximab (known as R2) helps to slow the spread of cancer cells without chemotherapy.Revlimid comes as a pill that you take by mouth once a day. The dose will depend on the type of lymphoma you have.
How Well Does it Work?
Just under one-third of people who take this drug will see their tumors shrink by 50%, Dr. Jain says. “But it may just keep people in a good functional status to live their lives for some months after the therapy.”
When combined with rituximab in one study, Revlimid significantly improved progression-free survival — the amount of time that passed before the cancer started to grow again. People who took this drug combo had an average progression-free survival time of nearly 40 months, compared to just 14 months in those who took rituximab plus a placebo (inactive pill).
Side Effect Cautions
Revlimid is a less toxic alternative to chemotherapy, but it isn’t side effect-free. People who take this medicine can have problems such as:
- Low blood cell counts, which can increase the risk for infections and anemia
- Diarrhea or constipation
- Nausea
- Joint and muscle pain
- Fever
- Swelling
- Cough
- Dizziness
- Headache
- Upper respiratory tract infection
It’s also possible that this treatment can increase the risk for a second cancer, although this is rare.
While taking this drug, “Patients should be watched very carefully,” Dr. Jain says. He also cautions that the effectiveness of Revlimid “may be modest.”
That’s why it’s important to discuss all of your treatment options with your cancer team before deciding on this or any other therapy. Find out how each treatment might help you, and what side effects it could cause.
If you’ve already been through a few treatments and your cancer hasn’t responded or it has relapsed, you also have the option of enrolling in a clinical trial. These studies test out new treatments or combinations of treatments to see whether they’re safe and if they work. It’s possible that a new therapy might be more effective against your cancer than Revlimid or any other of the non-Hodgkin lymphoma treatments that are currently available.
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