Oncology Data Advisor® · Final Overall Survival Results of the CLEAR Study in Renal Cell Carcinoma With Thomas Hutson, MD At the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting, Dr. Thomas Hutson, Director of the Urologic Oncology Cancer Research and Treatment Center at Baylor Sammons Cancer Center, discusses the results of the CLEAR study, in which he and his co-investigators measured the safety and efficacy of lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab for treatment of advance...

Oncology Data Advisor® · Renal Cell Carcinoma Research and Shared Decision Making With Bradley McGregor, MD At the recent 2023 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago, Oncology Data Advisor® sat down with Bradley McGregor, MD, Director of Clinical Research for the Lank Center of Genitourinary Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, to discuss his presentation regarding the results of the phase 2 study of cabozantinib (cabo) with nivolumab (nivo) an...

An educational enduring live meeting series and online activity provided by i3 Health has demonstrated knowledge gains encompassing the nurse's perspective of evolving treatment paradigms in advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Kidney cancer is among the top 10 most common cancers in the United States, accounting for approximately 4% of all cancer diagnoses in the US. The American Cancer Society predicted that in 2022, 79,000 new cases of kidney cancer would be diagnosed, with 13,920 of these ca...

Kidney cancer accounts for approximately 4% of all cancer diagnoses in the United States (ACS, 2020). An estimated 73,750 new cases are reported annually and 14,830 people die of the disease. Renal cell carcinoma, which comprises nearly 90% of all kidney cancers, is characterized by a lack of early warning signs, diverse clinical manifestations, and resistance to radiation and chemotherapy. Due to its often asymptomatic presentation, many patients have advanced disease at diagnosis, which is ass...

The FDA has approved pembrolizumab (Keytruda®, Merck) for the adjuvant treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma at intermediate-high or high risk of recurrence following nephrectomy or following nephrectomy with resection of metastatic lesions."Patients with renal cell carcinoma who undergo nephrectomy [had] no options for adjuvant therapy to reduce the risk of recurrence that have high levels of supporting evidence [prior to this approval]," wrote Toni K. Choueiri, MD, Director of the Ki...

Within the last few years, treatment of renal cell carcinoma has improved dramatically, with FDA approvals of several agents and numerous others in development. In this interview, Bradley McGregor, MD, Clinical Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, highlights these exciting developments and sheds light on the additional progress that is underway for the treatment of renal cell carcinoma. Onc...

The FDA has approved belzutifan (Welireg™, Merck), a hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) inhibitor, for patients with von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease who need therapy for associated renal cell carcinoma (RCC), central nervous system (CNS) hemangioblastomas, or pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (pNETs), but who do not require immediate surgery."Inactivation of VHL leads to aberrant stabilization and accumulation of HIF-2α, which drives tumor growth. Patients with VHL disease are at risk of clear cell R...

In 2021, an estimated 76,080 new cases of kidney cancer will be diagnosed. Among those cases, the majority will be renal cell carcinomas (RCC). In this excerpt of the transcript from their continuing medical education/nursing continuing professional development (CME/NCPD)–approved activity, Expert Guidance on New Advances in Renal Cell Carcinoma, Bradley McGregor, MD, Clinical Director of the Lank Center of Genitourinary Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and Robert Motzer, MD, Chair ...

Tivozanib (Fotivda®, Aveo Pharmaceuticals, Inc.) has been approved by the FDA for adult patients with relapsed/refractory advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who were previously treated with at least two systemic therapies. "Treatment for RCC has been revolutionized by inhibitors of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR)," wrote the investigators of TIVO-3 (NCT02627963), the trial on which the approval was based, led by Brian Rini, MD, Chief of Clinical Trials at the Vander...

Results from a phase 3 trial of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) presented this week at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Genitourinary Cancers Symposium and simultaneously published in The New England Journal of Medicine demonstrated that the first-line treatment regimen of lenvatinib, a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor, plus pembrolizumab, an anti–programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) monoclonal antibody, lengthened ...

The FDA has approved nivolumab (Opdivo®, Bristol Myers Squibb) in combination with cabozantinib (Cabometyx®, Exelixis) for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) receiving their first line of therapy. "As monotherapies, nivolumab and cabozantinib have demonstrated efficacy and a manageable safety profile in advanced RCC," wrote Toni Choueiri, MD, Director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and colleagues in their abstract of results from the...

There are over a dozen histologic variants of renal cell carcinoma (RCC); therefore, each tumor can vary widely based on genetic, pathologic, and clinical characteristics. The most common histologic variants of RCC include clear cell RCC, papillary RCC, and chromophobe RCC. In a recent study, results of which are now published in JAMA Network Open, researchers found that disease spread for metastatic RCC may vary based on histologic variant, and the location of disease spread is associated with ...

The FDA has issued draft guidance documents for drug and biologic development in the adjuvant treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and bladder cancer, with recommendations for clinical trials concerning eligibility criteria, methodology, and use of disease-free survival as an end point. "The FDA has actively encouraged a more uniform approach to developing clinical trials to evaluate adjuvant treatments for renal cell carcinoma and bladder cancer, including hosting a public workshop in p...

Patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) who receive combination PD-1/CTLA-4 blockade can experience periods of durable benefit and toxicity after treatment discontinuation. According to results of the phase 3 CheckMate 214 trial presented by Meredith Regan, ScD, at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020, nivolumab/ipilimumab prolongs treatment-free survival, both with and without toxicity, in patients with previously untreated advanced clear cell RCC. In...

Nivolumab/ipilimumab prolongs treatment-free survival with and without toxicity in patients with untreated advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), according to an updated analysis of the phase 3 CheckMate 214 trial presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020. "Conventional measures may not fully characterize the impact of immuno-oncology agents," comment the investigators in their presentation abstract, led by first author Meredith Regan, ScD, Associate Profe...

In patients with previously treated advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), nivolumab significantly increases overall survival and response rates compared with everolimus, according to the final updated analysis of the phase 3 CheckMate 025 trial. A randomized, open-label trial, CheckMate 025 enrolled 821 patients with advanced RCC previously treated with antiangiogenic therapies. Patients were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive 3 mg/kg of nivolumab intravenously every two weeks or 10 mg of evero...

While metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has a five-year survival rate of only 10%, patients whose tumors have variant histology or sarcomatoid differentiation face an even more dismal outlook, with limited treatment options. In a study now published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a team of researchers led by Bradley McGregor, MD, and Toni Choueiri, MD, reported that atezolizumab in combination with bevacizumab significantly increased progression-free survival and improved outcomes in p...

Gregg L. Semenza, MD, PhD, was recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his groundbreaking work in isolating hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) 1, which controls genes that are involved in cells' adaptation to low oxygen levels, with implications for cancer, ischemia, and chronic lung disease. In this interview with i3 Health, Dr. Semenza discusses the involvement of HIF-1 and HIF-2 in cancer and shares insights on the progress that is being made in developing HIF-1 and HIF-2 i...

Based on recent estimates, kidney cancer accounts for approximately 4% of all cancer diagnoses in the United States. An estimated 65,300 new cases are reported each year and more than 14,000 people die of the disease. Renal cell carcinoma (RCC), which comprises nearly 90% of all kidney cancers, is characterized by a lack of early warning signs, diverse clinical manifestations, and resistance to radiation and chemotherapy. As a result of its often asymptomatic presentation, many patients present ...