THOUSANDS of patients with advanced kidney cancer have been offered new hope by two drugs that could change the way the disease is treated.
One, nivolumab, stops tumours disarming the immune system and has already proved effective against melanoma skin cancer and lung cancer.
The other, cabozantinib, blocks enzymes that act as “on, off” switches in many cellular processes including those driving tumour growth.
Each year more than 10,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with kidney cancer, and 4,300 die from the disease.
Incidences of the disease have more than doubled since the mid-1970s. Because kidney cancer produces few early symptoms, it is often not diagnosed until at an advanced and dangerous stage.
The Phase III trial findings, presented at the European Cancer Congress meeting in Vienna, mean the drugs could be licensed for treating kidney cancer in Europe as early as next year.
Nivolumab is one of a new generation of antibody drugs that block “checkpoint” proteins used by many cancers to shield themselves from the immune system. In this case, the target molecule is a protein called PD-1 (programmed cell death-1).
James Whale, from the James Whale Fund for Kidney Cancer, said: “Thousands of patients each year in the UK are diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer and new medical treatments that can help improve survival are urgently needed. Today’s news is therefore very encouraging and will hopefully open the door to more options for patients in the future.”
The trial, which involved 821 patients, compared the effectiveness of nivolumab with that of the standard therapy, everolimus.
Those patients given infusions of nivolumab typically survived 25 months, 5.4 months longer than those on everolimus, and some showed a significantly better response.
Dr James Larkin, from London’s Royal Marsden Hospital, said: “These nivolumab data are compelling and mark the first time that an immunotherapy treatment of this type has demonstrated a significant improvement in kidney cancer survival.
“Once this disease has spread, the outlook for patients can be very poor. Newer and more effective, tolerable treatments are therefore sorely needed to address these unmet medical needs.”
The cost of the drugs is likely to be a significant factor affecting their accessibility in the UK.
Nivolumab costs around £5,500 per patient per month.
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