For Renal Cell Carcinoma, Duration of Sunitinib Treatment Shorter with Renal Insufficiency

the Cancer Therapy Advisor take:

First-line targeted therapy with sunitinib in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) is significantly shorter in patients with renal insufficiency (RI), according to a recent study published in the European Journal of Cancer.

In a retrospective, registry-based study, Alexandr Poprach, PhD, of Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute in the Czech Republic and fellow researchers looked at a cohort of 790 patients treated with sunitinib from 2006 to 2013. At initiation, 22 patients had severe RI, 234 had moderate RI, and 534 had mild to normal RI.

The researchers found that median progression-free survival rates among the three groups (severe, moderate, and mild-to-normal) was 5.3 months, 8.1 months, and 11.3 months, as well as median overall survival rates being 26.3 months, 21.2 months, and 26.3 months, respectively.

Additionally, disease control rates were 45.5 percent, 56.4 percent, and 59.2 percent, respectively. They found no unexpected toxicities in patients with RI, but treatment was more frequently discontinued due to adverse events in these patients, leading to a much shorter duration of therapy.

“These results highlight the need for optimal management of side-effects in patients with mRCC and RI,” the authors concluded.