EORTC-NCI-AACR: Avastin and Tarceva a Possible Bonus for Kidney Cancer Surgery

Michael Smith
Reviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Explain to patients who ask that targeted therapies, aimed at specific biochemical pathways, are under intensive investigation in renal cell cancer.
Note that this study looks at the use of targeted therapies before surgery, and says the method is safe and may have some efficacy, although more research is needed.
This study was published as an abstract and presented orally at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary as they have not yet been reviewed and published in a peer-reviewed publication.

PRAGUE, Nov. 9 -- For metastatic kidney cancer, neoadjuvant targeted therapy is apparently safe and may prolong progression-free survival, researchers said here.

Eight weeks of induction therapy with Avastin (bevacizumab) and Tarceva (erlotinib) before cytoreductive surgery had some peri-operative complications, but few that could be pinned to the treatment, according to Eric Jonasch, M.D., of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, and colleagues.

Also progression-free survival among evaluable patients was 16.6 months, longer than expected for a "relatively challenging" group, Dr. Jonasch told a symposium on molecular targets and cancer therapeutics, organized by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer, the National Cancer Institute, and the American Association for Cancer Research.

But Dr. Jonasch cautioned in an interview that the finding is preliminary and the translational phase II study -- involving only 35 patients so far of a planned 50 -- is intended as "hypothesis-generating, not hypothesis confirming."

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