RATIONALE: Lenalidomide may stop the growth of kidney cancer by blocking blood flow to the tumor.

PURPOSE: This phase II trial is studying how well lenalidomide works in treating patients with advanced or unresectable kidney cancer.

OBJECTIVES:

• Evaluate the best response in patients with advanced or unresectable renal cell carcinoma (RCC) treated with lenalidomide.
• Evaluate the response duration, time to tumor progression, and survival of patients with advanced RCC treated with lenalidomide.
• Evaluate the safety of this drug in these patients.

OUTLINE: This is an open-label study.

Patients receive oral lenalidomide daily on days 1-21. Courses repeat every 28 days in the absence of unacceptable toxicity or disease progression.

After completion of study treatment, patients are followed every 3 months.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 26 patients will be accrued for this study.

DISEASE CHARACTERISTICS:

• Histologically or cytologically confirmed renal cell carcinoma (RCC)

  • Advanced or unresectable RCC

• Measurable disease, defined as at least one lesion that can be accurately measured in at least one dimension (longest diameter to be recorded) as ≥ 20 mm with conventional techniques OR ≥ 10 mm with spiral CT scan

• No brain metastases

  • Brain metastases that have been treated with either radiotherapy or surgery and remain asymptomatic, with no active brain metastases, as shown by CT scan or MRI, for ≥ 6 months are allowed

PATIENT CHARACTERISTICS:

• ECOG performance status (PS) 0-1 OR Karnofsky PS 70-100%

• Absolute neutrophil count ≥ 1,500/mm³

• Platelet count ≥ 100,000/mm³

• Creatinine ≤ 2.0 mg/dL

• Bilirubin ≤ 1.5 mg/dL

• AST and ALT ≤ 2.5 times upper limit of normal (ULN) (5 times ULN if hepatic metastases are present)

• Not pregnant or nursing

• Negative pregnancy test

• Fertile patients must use effective contraception

• No other malignancies within the past 5 years, except for treated basal cell or squamous cell carcinoma of the skin, carcinoma in situ of the cervix or breast, localized prostate cancer, or superficial bladder cancer

• No history of allergic reactions attributed to compounds of similar chemical or biological composition to lenalidomide or thalidomide

• No uncontrolled intercurrent illness including, but not limited to, any of the following:

  • Ongoing or active infection
  • Symptomatic congestive heart failure
  • Unstable angina pectoris
  • Cardiac arrhythmia
  • Psychiatric illness or social situation that would limit study compliance

• No hepatitis A, B, or C positivity

• No HIV positivity

PRIOR CONCURRENT THERAPY:

• See Disease Characteristics
• No more than 1 prior systemic therapy for RCC (e.g., chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, immunotherapy)
• At least 4 weeks since prior surgery, radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, or immunotherapy and recovered
• No prior lenalidomide
• No other concurrent anticancer agents or treatments
• No other concurrent investigational agents
• No concurrent sargramostim (GM-CSF), radiotherapy, or thalidomide