An Expert Looks to the Future of Metastatic Kidney Cancer Treatment

Video

Dr. Toni K. Choueiri discusses what therapies are currently available for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, as well as what new treatments could be on the horizon.

When it comes to current treatments that are available for patients with newly diagnosed metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), Dr. Toni K. Choueiri, director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, director of the Kidney Cancer Center, and senior physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, notes that there are quite a few options in existence, with more on the way.

In a recent interview with CURE®’s sister publication, OncLive®, Choueiri, who is also the Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg chair and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discussed not only the current treatment options for patients with mRCC, but those that could be viable in the near future once current trials are concluded.

Transcription:

Absolutely. I think now we're entering in an era of combination therapy, where single agent tyrosine kinase inhibitors are being given less and less.

We have an FDA approved regimen in the past couple of years (of) nivolumab and ipilimumab, intravenous immune-oncology drug, but also axitinib in combination with the PD1 inhibitor pembrolizumab or the PDL1 inhibitor avelumab.

We also have a single agent cabozantinib that also showed superiority over sunitinib in a randomized trial by the name CABOSUN.

The therapies overall in metastatic disease are still evolving, because there are trials that are finished accrual and reading, or just about to read, and may add more options this to this list.

Related Videos
Jessica McDade, B.S.N., RN, OCN, in an interview with CURE
For patients with cancer, the ongoing chemotherapy shortage may cause some anxiety as they wonder how they will receive their drugs. However, measuring drugs “down to the minutiae of the milligrams” helped patients receive the drugs they needed, said Alison Tray. Tray is an advanced oncology certified nurse practitioner and current vice president of ambulatory operations at Rutgers Cancer Institute in New Jersey.  If patients are concerned about getting their cancer drugs, Tray noted that having “an open conversation” between patients and providers is key.  “As a provider and a nurse myself, having that conversation, that reassurance and sharing the information is a two-way conversation,” she said. “So just knowing that we're taking care of you, we're going to make sure that you receive the care that you need is the key takeaway.” In June 2023, many patients were unable to receive certain chemotherapy drugs, such as carboplatin and cisplatin because of an ongoing shortage. By October 2023, experts saw an improvement, although the “ongoing crisis” remained.  READ MORE: Patients With Lung Cancer Face Unmet Needs During Drug Shortages “We’re really proud of the work that we could do and achieve that through a critical drug shortage,” Tray said. “None of our patients missed a dose of chemotherapy and we were able to provide that for them.” Tray sat down with CURE® during the 49th Annual Oncology Nursing Society Annual Congress to discuss the ongoing chemo shortage and how patients and care teams approached these challenges. Transcript: Particularly at Hartford HealthCare, when we established this infrastructure, our goal was to make sure that every patient would get the treatment that they need and require, utilizing the data that we have from ASCO guidelines to ensure that we're getting the optimal high-quality standard of care in a timely fashion that we didn't have to delay therapies. So, we were able to do that by going down to the minutiae of the milligrams on hand, particularly when we had a lot of critical drug shortages. So it was really creating that process to really ensure that every patient would get the treatment that they needed. For more news on cancer updates, research and education, don’t forget to subscribe to CURE®’s newsletters here.
Man in a navy suit with a purple tie. Dr. Saby George talks to CURE about how treatment with Opdivo could mitigate disparities in patients with kidney cancer.
Dr. Andrea Apolo in an interview with CURE
Dr. Kim in an interview with CURE
Dr. Nguyen, from Stanford Health, in an interview with CURE
Related Content