Last week celebrated the in-person and online 2022 annual Genitourinary (GU) Cancer Symposium of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), 17-19 February, San Francisco, CA, USA. Interviewed remotely by the oncology channel ecancer during the meeting, Cristina Suárez, a Clinical Investigator and Medical Oncologist of VHIO’s Genitourinary, CNS Tumors, Sarcoma & Cancer of Unknown Primary Site Group (PI: Joan Carles), was invited to discuss the extended follow-up results of the phase III CheckMate -9ER trial, presented at this premier gathering in oncology.
Specifically, this multicenter and international study was performed in 125 cancer institutes, urology centers and hospitals across 18 countries, including VHIO and the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital (HUVH), and was designed to assess the combination of first-line nivolumab plus cabozantinib versus sunitinib in the treatment of advanced renal cell carcinoma (aRCC).
Cristina Suárez, also a CheckMate 9ER investigator and co-author of the recently published patient-reported outcomes (Cella D et al. 2021)*, begins by providing an overview of this study and then talks about the initial data obtained over the past few years which were first presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology’s (ESMO) Virtual Congress 2020, with further results that were subsequently selected to showcase during last year’s ASCO GU Symposium, 2021
Discussing the extended follow-up data presented at last week’s ASCO GU 2022, she highlights the sustained efficacy and tumor shrinkage achieved with cabozantinib plus nivolumab compared to sunitinib in the first-line treatment of aRCC. She also notes that, at a median follow-up of 32.9 months, patients who were treated with the combination continued to report improvements in health-related quality of life with a consistent safety profile with that previously reported for cabozantinib and nivolumab.
Considering that the current survival rate of people living with aRCC is around 12%, she concludes that these extended data point to the promise ahead in significantly reducing the risk of death from this disease, even achieving a complete response in some patients, whilst maintaining quality of life.
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Reference:
*Cella D, Motzer RJ, Suarez C, Blum SI, Ejzykowicz F, Hamilton M, Wallace JF, Simsek B, Zhang J, Ivanescu C, Apolo AB, Choueiri TK. Patient-reported outcomes with first-line nivolumab plus cabozantinib versus sunitinib in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma treated in CheckMate 9ER: an open-label, randomised, phase 3 trial. Lancet Oncol. 2022 Jan 12:S1470-2045(21)00693-8. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(21)00693-8. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 35032437.
