A Study of BR Alone Versus in Combination With Acalabrutinib in Subjects With Previously Untreated MCL

A second randomised confirmation that adding a Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor to first-line bendamustine-rituximab delays progression in older patients with mantle cell lymphoma, with a toxicity profile that did not improve as much as the drug's selectivity promised.

Twenty-eight extra months of progression-free survival, with no survival gain and a high rate of severe adverse events in both arms. It set up the two trials that followed: ECHO, which substituted a more selective inhibitor, and ENRICH, which removed the chemotherapy.