Kidney Cancer

For many patients diagnosed with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, sunitinib alone is not inferior to surgery followed by sunitinib.

Preliminary findings for pegilodecakin plus immune checkpoint inhibition suggest that the combination is tolerable and shows clinical activity.

No one molecular biomarker is likely to guide treatment of RCC in the foreseeable future. Multipredictor models might be a way forward, an expert concluded.

Routinely available patient and tumor features accurately predicted the risk progression and death from RCC post nephrectomy, a Mayo Clinic team found.

A pooled retrospective analysis of nearly 5,000 mRCC patients in phase II and III trials showed PFS among NSAIDs users was half that of NSAIDs nonusers.

The significantly better PFS compared with sunitinib supports cabozantinib as initial therapy for patients with advanced RCC of intermediate or poor risk.

In a pivotal trial, combination of nivolumab and ipilimumab yielded improvement in OS and ORR of poor-risk RCC patients.

Antibiotics administered within 30 days of starting immunotherapy reduced both PFS and OS for patients with advanced RCC and NSCLC.

A phase III study by Dr. Robert Motzer and colleagues in NEJM found significantly higher OS and ORRs with the immunotherapy combination.

First-line combination therapy with the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab and the VEGFR TKI axitinib yielded antitumor activity in previously untreated RCC.

Compared with sorafenib, tivozanib significantly improved PFS and OS, and yielded significantly higher ORRs, a crossover analysis of TIVO-1 found.

First- and second-line treatment of clear cell RCC has changed dramatically, Dr. Eric Jonasch said during the NCCN Annual Conference in Orlando.

In a large Chinese study, in certain RCC subgroups cancer-specific survival outcomes were better with partial rather than radical nephrectomy.

Patients who received Bacteroides-targeting antibiotics had a median PFS of 18 months compared with 8 months in patients with no antibiotic use.

Pazopanib was not associated with prolonged progression-free survival compared with temsirolimus among patients with advanced clear-cell renal cell carcinoma, but a subgroup analysis of intermediate-risk patients offered some reason for optimism.

Adjuvant therapy with sunitinib after nephrectomy was associated with increased mortality among older women with renal cell carcinoma, according to a subgroup analysis of data from the ASSURE trial.

Combining axitinib and pembrolizumab is “safe and tolerable” among patients with previously untreated advanced renal cell carcinoma, with 73% of patients responding, according to findings from an open-label, phase Ib trial.

Metastatic RCC patients treated with cabozantinib had similar quality-of-life outcomes as those treated with everolimus, but had a longer time to deterioration.

Adding atezolizumab and bevacizumab to standard care was tolerable and slowed tumor growth in patients with previously untreated clear-cell or sarcomatoid-histology metastatic renal cell carcinoma when compared to sunitinib, according to findings from a phase III study.

Use of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy effectively treated patients with primary renal cell carcinoma and had an acceptable effect on patient renal function.

Reduced expression of PBRM1 and VHL was correlated with increased tumor aggressiveness in clear cell renal cell carcinoma, according to the results of a recent study. 

The FDA has expanded the label for cabozantinib (Cabometyx) to include first-line treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma regardless of treatment status. Cabozantinib was initially approved in patients who had previously received anti-angiogenic therapy.

This article provides a practical perspective on the management of advanced RCC, as well as insight into the current models of risk stratification and ongoing clinical trials. The discussion will focus on the currently available systemic therapies; other strategies that are beyond the scope of this article include active surveillance and metastasectomy.

A new study demonstrates a relationship between radiographic tumor burden and the detection of circulating tumor DNA in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma.

Data presented at the 16th International Kidney Cancer Symposium showed that TP53 and VHL genes could act as predictive biomarkers for VEGF-targeted therapy for RCC.