Kidney Cancer

“This research suggests that proactive and continuous management of metabolic syndrome may serve as an essential strategy in preventing cancer," says Han-Ping Shi, MD, PhD.

"I emphasized the fact that the use of ultrasound is very important and should be done on every single case," says Nazih Paul Khater, MD, FACS.

The FIT-001 trial is assessing KO-2806 as a monotherapy and in combination with targeted therapies in patients with advanced solid tumors, including ccRCC.

The study plans to enroll 144 patients with solid tumors, including RCC, non-small cell lung cancer, colorectal carcinoma (CRC), and other malignancies known to express HHLA2/B7-H7.

“These clinical data show encouraging safety and efficacy with JANX007 in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer and with JANX008 in late-stage solid tumors," says David Campbell, PhD.

In total, the investigators assessed data from 886 patients with advanced kidney cancer who were randomly assigned to receive avelumab plus axitinib or subitinib.

“We see the pathways of PD-1 resistance being explored across oncology. Kidney cancer is not especially leading the way on that,” says Mayer Fishman, MD, PhD.

"The SPICI study is a randomized phase 3 [trial] asking the question of de-escalation," says Laurence Albiges, MD, PhD.

“The results suggest there is a clinically meaningful population of patients who can experience a long-term survival benefit from tivozanib over sorafenib,” said Kathryn E. Beckermann, MD, PhD.

Immunotherapy initiation within 1 month of death for patients with renal cell carcinoma increased from 0.5% to 2.6% over the course of the study.

"For me, the take-home message is that reduced or even no-narcotic discharge for patients after kidney surgery is feasible, and that it really should be our mindset of, can we reduce the amount of opioids we use?" says Craig G. Rogers, MD.

As the year comes to a close, we revisit some of this year’s top content on kidney cancer.

"For me, as a physician who treats patients with kidney cancer and does surgeries, where this study is going to help me and change my practice is making me more thoughtful and intentional in the way I approach my patients with their pain management," says Craig G. Rogers, MD.

“Gone are the days when scalpel was king or queen in this space. The armamentarium of medications and systemic treatments, combination treatments has exploded, and our understanding of the biology of disease is expanding,” says Harras B. Zaid, MD.

The combination was explored in genomically defined metastatic renal cell carcinoma cohorts.

“I think we should all be pretty selective in whom we're operating on in the metastasectomy setting,” says Harras B. Zaid, MD.

"The study was done between April 2021 to 2023, so a 2-year span. It was surprising to find that 24% of our patients in that time span had opioid-free discharge," says Katherine Wang, MD.

"Again, operating has more and more taken a backseat as the armamentarium of systemic medications, especially checkpoint inhibitors [and] combination treatments, has exploded," says Harras B. Zaid, MD.

The approval is supported by findings from the phase 3 LITESPARK-005 trial.

“There has been a stage migration in part related to the availability of cross-sectional imaging, but there's still a proportion of patients who present with locally advanced disease,” says Harras B. Zaid, MD.

"In 2021, we started collecting data on opioids prescribed at discharge to see whether or not patients did or did not get prescribed opioids," says Katherine Wang, MD.

W. Kimryn Rathmell, MD, PhD, an internationally recognized expert in kidney cancer, is Chair of the Department of Medicine and Physician-in-Chief at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Data from the phase 2 LITESPARK-004 trial led to the FDA approval of belzutifan for patients with von Hippel-Lindau disease who require therapy for associated renal cell carcinoma and other diseases.

The novel TKI zanzalintinib demonstrated early efficacy signals with manageable toxicity in patients with advanced clear-cell renal cell carcinoma.

Researchers are exploring the potential of CAR T-cell therapy in patients with renal cell carcinoma who have disease progression following treatment with checkpoint inhibitors and VEGF inhibitors.

Adjuvant pembrolizumab improved overall survival compared with placebo in patients with renal cell carcinoma at intermediate-high or high risk of recurrence following nephrectomy, or following nephrectomy and resection of metastatic lesions.

Data showed noninferiority of subcutaneous nivolumab to intravenous nivolumab in the time-average to nivolumab serum concentration over 28 days (Cavgd28) and the trough serum concentration at steady state (Cminss).

“We also found that socioeconomic disparities, which disproportionately affected African American patients with kidney cancer, play an important role in impacting survival in RCC,” says Nirmish Singla, MD, MSc.

“The goal of our work, essentially, was to leverage a national population-based cancer registry to comprehensively analyze multiple socioeconomic determinants of racial disparities and survival outcomes among nearly 400,000 patients with renal cell carcinoma,” says Nirmish Singla, MD, MSc.