Data Suggest Need for Novel Therapies in Later-Line Metastatic RCC

Neil J. Shah, MBBS, spoke with CancerNetwork^® at the 2024 Kidney Cancer Research Summit (KCRS) about findings from a real-world study assessing treatment patterns and outcomes among patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) following prior therapy with immunotherapy and tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs).

Data from the study highlighted patients with metastatic RCC mostly received TKIs with or without immunotherapy following frontline therapy. After immunotherapy-based treatment in the first-line setting, the most common second-line therapy option was cabozantinib (Cabometyx) in 57.4% of patients.

According to Shah, a genitourinary medical oncologist from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, findings demonstrated that clinical outcomes such as overall survival were comparable when using different types of treatment regimens in patients who previously received immunotherapy or TKI-based therapy. Overall, the findings suggest the need to develop more novel treatment strategies to improve outcomes in this setting.

Transcript:

The kidney cancer treatment landscape is changing rapidly. We have many new treatment regimens in the kidney cancer space, especially within the first-line setting. Now, the question is, what happens after a patient [receives] more than a first-line agent, including immunotherapy [IO] plus IO and IO plus tyrosine kinase inhibitor [TKI] agents? What are the next-line agents they are receiving? What are their efficacy data? That was the rationale for us to study in this poster.

We noted a diverse pattern of different agents used in this setting, with cabozantinib being one of the most common drugs. There are a lot of different combination drugs being used, including IO/TKI combinations. What we noted was that, to our surprise, there was no one agent that was superior. There was no difference in overall survival among all these diverse agents used in this line setting, which was an interesting finding. [Based on these data], we need novel agents in this line or in this space post-IO/TKIs to improve the outcomes.

Reference

Shah N, Sura S, Shinde R, et al. Real-world treatment patterns and clinical outcomes of metastatic renal cell carcinoma patients post immune-oncology (IO) and Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) receptor targeted therapies. Presented at the 2024 Kidney Cancer Research Summit; July 11-12, 2023; Boston, MA. Abstract 36.