Combination therapy extended survival in kidney cancer patients

Combination therapy extended survival in kidney cancer patients

1 Jun 2015

Renal cell carcinoma is the most common form of kidney cancer. Despite the standard treatment of molecular targeted drug therapy, it remains a disease for which patients have very few treatment options. A phase 2 trial of lenvatinib comes to bring hope to patients as it shows that when treated with the combination of lenvatinib with everolimus, patients survived longer without disease progression compared to their progression free survival rates when treated with everolimus alone.

Everolimus is a 2nd-line therapy for unresectable advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma. Currently, no combination therapy for this indication has been approved anywhere in the world.

Tumor size reduction for more patients

The study met its primary endpoint as patients treated with the combination regimen experienced a median progression free survival of 14.6 months compared with 5.5 months for those who received everolimus alone.

The objective response rate (the proportion of patients to see a tumor size reduction of a predefined amount for a minimum time period) in both the lenvatinib plus everolimus group and the lenvatinib alone group demonstrated an improvement compared to the everolimus alone group.

An encouraging step forward for kidney cancer patients

For lenvatinib in combination with everolimus, the most common treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAE) reported in the lenvatinib plus everolimus group were diarrhea, hypertension, decreased appetite and fatigue.

 “For people with renal cell carcinoma, these data represent an encouraging step forward. Current treatment options often have a limited duration of benefit and these positive results show the potential role of lenvatinib in patients with advanced kidney cancer,” commented James Larkin, Consultant Medical Oncologist at The Royal Marsden Hospital, London.

Source: eCancer News