Pembrolizumab After ASCT for Hodgkin Lymphoma, DLBCL and T-NHL

May 4, 2026 updated by: Reid Merryman, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

A Phase 2 Study of Pembrolizumab (MK-3475) After Autologous Stem Cell Transplantation in Patients With Relapsed/Refractory Classical Hodgkin Lymphoma and, Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma and T- Cell Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

This phase II study is designed to determine the clinical efficacy of PD-1 blockade, using the anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody pembrolizumab (MK-3475), administered as consolidation therapy after autologous stem cell transplant (ASCT), in patients with relapsed or refractory (R/R) Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma (DLBCL), classical Hodgkin Lymphoma (cHL) or peripheral T-cell lymphoma (PTCL) in 1st remission.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Pembrolizumab is an antibody drug that blocks a molecule called PD-1. PD-1 is a receptor molecule on the surface of immune cells that can be used to turn off the immune response. Some cancers use this as a way to turn off the immune response against them. Blocking PD-1 with pembrolizumabmay restore an effective immune attack against the lymphoma cells.

On this study, patients who undergo ASCT for R/R cHL, DLBCL or PTCL in 1st remission will receive pembrolizumab at a dose of 200mg intravenously every 3 weeks for up to 8 cycles, beginning within a few weeks of ASCT.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

82

Phase

  • Phase 2

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • California
      • Duarte, California, United States, 91010
        • City of Hope National Medical Center
    • Massachusetts
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215
        • Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02114
        • Massachusetts General Hospital
      • Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 02215
        • Dana Farber Cancer Institute
    • New York
      • New York, New York, United States, 10065
        • Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
    • Texas
      • Houston, Texas, United States, 77030
        • MD Anderson Cancer Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion criteria

• Histologically confirmed diagnosis with review of the diagnostic pathology specimen at one of the participating institutions. Eligible histologies are: Arm A: Diffuse large B cell lymphoma; patients with a prior history of indolent B-cell NHL are eligible, as long as they have histologically confirmed DLBCL prior to their pre-transplant salvage treatment. Patients with mediastinal large B cell lymphoma are also eligible.

Arm B: Classical Hodgkin lymphoma (patients with nodular lymphocyte predominant Hodgkin lymphoma [NLPHL] are NOT eligible) Arm C: Peripheral T cell lymphoma - eligible subtypes will include PTCL, NOS; AITL; and ALK-negative ALCL. Patients with other PTCL histologies, including ALK-positive PTCL, and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma will not be eligible..

  • Age ≥ 18 at the time of enrollment.
  • For arms A and B, participants must have relapsed after or been refractory to first-line chemotherapy, i.e., they must have failed to achieve CR after first-line therapy or must have relapsed subsequently if they achieved CR. For arm C, participants will be eligible if transplant is performed as consolidation of first remission (partial or complete).
  • Participants must be planning to receive or have received autologous stem cell transplantation. Participants must have chemosensitive disease prior to ASCT, defined as achieving at least a partial remission (as determined with PET imaging) to salvage treatment. Participants with cHL or DLBCL (arms A and B) transplanted in 1st remission after only one line of treatment are not eligible. Participants with PTCL (arm C) transplanted beyond 1st remission are also not eligible.
  • No more than 1 line of anthracycline-containing chemotherapy prior to ASCT, and no more than 3 lines of therapy total prior to ASCT for arms A and B; no more than 1 line of therapy prior to ASCT for arm C.
  • Participants cannot have received any anti-neoplastic therapy (including radiotherapy, chemotherapy or immunotherapy) after ASCT
  • Participants must have had PET-CT for restaging after salvage therapy and before ASCT.
  • Participants must begin study treatment no later than 21 days from the post-ASCT discharge. Additionally, they must have recovered from ASCT toxicities at the time of first study treatment.
  • ECOG performance status ≤2

  • Participants must have normal organ and marrow function as defined below:

    • absolute neutrophil count ≥ 1,000/mcL
    • platelets ≥ 50,000/mcL
    • Hemoglobin ≥ 8 g/dl
    • total bilirubin ≤ 1.5 × institutional upper limit of normal (ULN), or direct bilirubin ≤ ULN in patients with Gilbert's syndrome
    • AST(SGOT)/ALT(SGPT) ≤ 2.5 × ULN
    • Creatinine ≤ 1.5 × ULN or creatinine clearance ≥ 60 mL/min/1.73 m2
    • Resting and ambulatory oxygen saturation ≥ 94% on room air
    • FEV1 and DLCO (adjusted for Hemoglobin) ≥ 50% predicted
  • Willigness to use contraception
  • Ability to understand and the willingness to sign a written informed consent document.

Exclusion criteria

  • Participants who are receiving any other investigational agents after ASCT.
  • Participants with active CNS involvement are excluded.
  • History of or active autoimmune disease, or other syndrome that requires systemic steroids or autoimmune agents. Participants with vitiligo, resolved childhood asthma or atopy, hypothyroidism, or Sjogren's syndrome, as well as participants requiring only intranasal steroids, intermittent use of bronchodilators, local steroid injections, or physiologic replacement doses of prednisone (≤ 10 mg/d) are not excluded from this study.
  • History of allergic reactions attributed to compounds of similar chemical or biologic composition to pembrolizumab. Prior hypersensitivity reactions to anti-CD20 therapy or anti-CD30 therapy is not an exclusion criterion.
  • Has a history of (non-infectious) pneumonitis that required steroids or current pneumonitis.
  • Receipt of > 600 mg/m2 total dose of BCNU with prior treatments including transplant conditioning regimen.
  • Uncontrolled illness including, but not limited to, ongoing or active infection, symptomatic congestive heart failure, unstable angina pectoris, cardiac arrhythmia, or psychiatric illness/social situations that would limit compliance with study requirements or pose excess risk to the participant in the opinion of the treating clinician..
  • Pregnant or lactating women.
  • HIV-positive.
  • Participants with active viral hepatitis (positive HepB sAg, positive HepB core Ab with positive HepB viral load, or positive HepC antibody with positive HepC viral load).
  • Receipt of a live vaccine within 30 days of the start of treatment. Examples are measles, mumps, rubella, varicella, yellow fever, rabies, BCG, oral polio vaccine, and oral typhoid vaccine.
  • Prior treatment with an anti PD-1, anti PD-L1, or anti CTLA-4 agent. Participants who entered clinical remission with one of those agents and proceeded to ASCT without intervening relapse may be eligible after discussion with the Study Chair. Note that for patients who enter remission with checkpoint blockade therapy, this will not count towards the 3 lines of prior therapy.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Diffuse large B cell lymphoma
Pembrolizumab 200mg IV every 3 weeks up to 8 cycles
Drug: Pembrolizumab
Anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody
Other Names:
  • Keytruda
  • MK-3475
  • SCH 900475
Experimental: Classical Hodgkin lymphoma
Pembrolizumab 200mg IV every 3 weeks up to 8 cycles
Drug: Pembrolizumab
Anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody
Other Names:
  • Keytruda
  • MK-3475
  • SCH 900475
Experimental: Peripheral T cell lymphoma
Pembrolizumab 200mg IV every 3 weeks up to 8 cycles
Drug: Pembrolizumab
Anti-PD-1 monoclonal antibody
Other Names:
  • Keytruda
  • MK-3475
  • SCH 900475

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Progression-free Survival After ASCT
Time Frame: 18 Months
Proportion of patients alive and disease-free 18 months from autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT). Progression criteria are per Lugano 2014 criteria. All patients receiving any amount of protocol treatment. Patients who have progressed or lost to follow-up prior to 18 months are counted as failures; only patients followed and progression-free for at least 18 months are counted as successes.
18 Months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Overall Survival
Time Frame: 18 Months
Survival probability of patients alive 18 months from ASCT, time-to-event
18 Months
Relapse
Time Frame: 18 Months
Number of patients who relapse within 18 months from autologous stem cell transplantation.
18 Months
Safety and Tolerability Assessed by CTCAE v4 Grade 2 and Above Toxicity Related to Study Treatment
Time Frame: 6 months
Number of patients who experienced at least a grade 2 toxicity with "definite," "probable," or "possible" attribute to study treatment, according to the revised NCI Common Terminology Criteria for Adverse Events (CTCAE) version 4.0
6 months
Response Rate to Pembrolizumab
Time Frame: 18 months
In patients with measurable disease after ASCT, rate of objective response after treatment. Response was assessed using the Lugano 2014 criteria.
18 months
Progression-free Survival
Time Frame: 18 months
Progression-free survival probability of patients who are alive and without progression 18 months from ASCT, time-to-event
18 months

Other Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Overall Survival After ASCT by PET Status
Time Frame: 18 months
Survival probability of patients alive 18 months from ASCT stratified by PET status before transplantation, time-to-event. Patients categorized by complete metabolic response (complete response by PET scan, assessed using the Lugano 2014 criteria), partial response (assessed using Lugano 2014 criteria) prior to transplantation.
18 months
Progression-free Survival After ASCT by PET Status
Time Frame: 18 months
Progression-free survival probability of patients alive and disease-free 18 months from ASCT stratified by PET status before transplantation, time-to-event
18 months
Completion Rate
Time Frame: 18 months
Number of patients who complete the planned treatment
18 months
Minimal Residual Disease
Time Frame: 18 months
Level of MRD detected by PCR (if feasible) before and after pembrolizumab
18 months

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Collaborators

Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Reid Merryman, MD, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

April 1, 2015

Primary Completion (Actual)

October 26, 2021

Study Completion (Actual)

June 1, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

February 5, 2015

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 9, 2015

First Posted (Estimated)

February 13, 2015

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

May 18, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 4, 2026

Last Verified

May 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 14-566

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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