Thomas Hutson, DO, PharmD, on the CLEAR Trial and Its Implications for the Treatment of RCC in the Frontline Setting

CancerNetwork® sat down with Thomas Hutson, DO, PharmD, director of the Urologic Oncology Program and co-chair of the Urologic Cancer Research and Treatment Center at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, as well as a Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine, to discuss trial results in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) that were presented at the recent Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

Hutson was an investigator on the phase 3 CLEAR trial (NCT02811861) which examined 3 treatment arms of lenvatinib (Lenvima) plus pembrolizumab (Keytruda), lenvatinib plus everolimus, or standard sunitinib (Sutent) as therapy for patients with frontline advanced RCC.1

“Checkpoint inhibitors have really revolutionized the treatment of advanced cancer for many different tumor types,” Hutson said. “We’ve made an advance [in RCC] with some of the newer [tyrosine kinase inhibitors]…with the approval of checkpoint inhibitors and realizing that has a significant role to play in this disease, naturally combining the 2 together was the next step.”

Looking at complete response data specifically, Hutson said the use of a checkpoint inhibitor plus TKI combination shines, as rates were 14% with pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib and only 10% and 4% with lenvatinib/everolimus and sunitinib monotherapy, respectively.

This segment comes from the CancerNetwork® portion of the MJH Life Sciences™ Medical World News®, airing daily on all MJH Life Sciences™ channels.

Reference:

Motzer RJ, Porta C, Eto M, et al. Phase 3 trial of lenvatinib (LEN) plus pembrolizumab (PEMBRO) or everolimus (EVE) versus sunitinib (SUN) monotherapy as a first-line treatment for patients (pts) with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) (CLEAR study). J Clin Oncol. 2021;39(suppl6):269. doi: 10.1200/JCO.2021.39.6_suppl.269