Frontline Immunotherapy May Offer Best Chance to Cure Kidney Cancer

It may be possible to cure patients with kidney cancer via immunotherapy, according to Michael B. Atkins, MD.

In collaboration with KidneyCAN, CancerNetwork^® spoke with Atkins, a medical oncologist and the deputy director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, about the current state and next steps towards progress for neoadjuvant and adjuvant therapies in the management of renal cell carcinoma and other kidney cancers. Of note, he emphasized the use of early immunotherapy as a therapeutic strategy for this patient population.

Atkins said that clinicians should avoid telling patients that their kidney malignancies are incurable. Offering immunotherapy upfront, he described, may offer the best opportunity of curing patients of their disease. Additionally, he noted that there are several other strategies that can help keep diseases at bay in the event that prior immunotherapy doesn’t produce a cure. In the end, Atkins stated that clinical trials still have a role in potentially improving outcomes reported with immunotherapy in the frontline setting and beyond, and that patients should have the chance to enroll in these studies.

KidneyCAN is a nonprofit organization with a mission to accelerate cures for kidney cancer through education, advocacy, and research funding. Learn more about KidneyCAN’s mission and work here.

Transcript:

The takeaway that I would hope for is for people to understand that kidney cancer can be cured with immune therapy. You shouldn’t be telling your patients with metastatic kidney cancer that their disease is not curable. The best way of producing those cures is to give the best immunotherapies first, and there are many other treatments that can be given if the patient is not cured with immune therapy that can keep the disease at bay. There’s still a role for clinical trials to try to improve the immunotherapy outcomes in the first line and subsequent lines. Where possible, patients should be referred for those trials.