Comment: New immunotherapy options for kidney cancer

Prof Martine Piccart - Jules Bordet Institute, Brussels, Belgium

What are your thoughts on the new kidney cancer treatments?

First of all, I am not a kidney cancer expert but clearly these are two positive phase III trials that recruited several hundreds of patients across multiple countries. They enrolled patients with advanced disease previously exposed to other treatments. One of the two studies is very mature and reports a survival gain of five months for an immune checkpoint inhibitor compared to the standard of care, everolimus. So that is clearly very interesting and very meaningful and possibly this will lead to registration of the drug. We heard that there is already a fast-track approval by the FDA and I hope, of course, that the EMA will do the same. So these are very good news for patients provided – provided – that the treatment is affordable because these treatments are quite expensive. So it means that we will have an important responsibility in the future to identify patients who really benefit, so to find biomarkers, and to also look at the optimal duration of these new treatments because it could be that the treatment does not have to be given for very long. As soon as there is an immune response the T-cells have a memory and it could well be that we can stop the treatment quickly which will decrease the cost. So this trial, I think, establishes a new standard of care.

The other one is very interesting but less mature. So what we heard today is a prolongation of progression free survival which does not necessarily imply an overall survival gain. So we have to wait but if that’s the case it’s exciting because we have then two completely different drugs that are bringing benefit and, of course, then the interesting next question is what if we combine them?