Two kidney cancer drugs can’t stop recurrence
Two widely drugs for treating kidney cancer — sorafenib and sunitinib — are no more effective than a placebo in preventing return of the disease to increase life spans of patients suffering from advanced kidney cancer after surgery, according to a new study led by Naomi B. Haas, MD, a researcher at the Abramson Cancer Center (ACC) of the University of Pennsylvania.
The study involved patients and researchers from 226 centers, including Massachusetts General Hospital and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. Robert Uzzo, MD, chair of Surgery, and Yu Ning Wong, MD, an associate professor of Medicine, at Fox Chase Cancer Center — Temple Health in Philadelphia, served as co-authors.
While surgery is typically the best initial treatment for renal tumors, surgical resection alone is not enough to prevent return of the disease in many patients. Adjuvant therapies (applied after initial treatment with the goal of suppressing secondary tumor formation) are often needed to improve survival.
Sunitinib and sorafenib are examples of adjuvant therapies known as kinase inhibitors. Kinases are proteins on or near the surface of cells; they help cancer grow and survive. Kinase inhibitors block the growth of kinases and associated blood vessels which nourish cancers. Sorafenib and sunitinib, which are taken in pill form on a daily basis, are thought to block different kinases.
Both drugs have been shown to be effective when kidney cancer has spread to other parts of the body. Could they also be effective in preventing recurrence of the disease?
“The current standard of care for these patients is close observation,” Haas said. “Unfortunately, we found that the use of sunitinib or sorafenib in this setting did not reduce the incidence of recurrence as compared to placebo. Fortunately, the use of these drugs in this setting did not appear to make the outcome of patients receiving them any worse.”
The findings closely mirror those of adjuvant trials in other tumors, such as breast and metastatic colorectal cancers, in which the benefits of bevacizumab in metastatic disease were not seen in the adjuvant setting.
This study, designed and conducted by ECOG-ACRIN, is the first and largest trial on the effectiveness of these two kinase inhibitors in patients whose kidney tumors have been completely removed and who are at high risk for recurrence.
Category: Features, Pharmaceuticals
