Nivolumab-Ipilimumab Combination Shows Promising Activity in Advanced RCC Confirmed

Release Date: 23-Sep-2019

The Phase III clinical trial confirms that the survival benefit of nivolumab plus ipilimumab is more than the other first line treatment in patients with Intermediate and poor risk advanced renal cell Carcinoma. This was reported by the investigators at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

The Clinical trial phase or CheckMate 214 trial compared the treatments of about 1096 intention-to-treat patient. All the patients were belonging to advanced RCC. They were randomly assigned to receive nivolumab plus ipilimumab. The Nivolumab is a programmed death 1 (PD-1) immune checkpoint inhibitor antibody and the ipilimumab belongs to the class of anticytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen-4 antibody. Iplimumab is given to about 550 patients. Sunitinib is also given in about 546 patients, which is a vascular endothelial growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor.

The results of the primary analysis show that the intermediate- and poor-risk patients had a minimum follow-up of 17.5 months. The 18-month overall survival rate was 75% for the nivolumab-ipilimumab group and 60% for sunitinib recipients. The risk of death is about 37% less than patients with sunitinib treatment. The objective response rate was found out to be 42% and 27% respectively.

According to the latest analysis, the observed patients should have a minimum follow-up of about 30 months. The results shows that for patients with intermediate- and poor-risk disease, those who were treated with nivolumab plus ipilimumab had a significant 34% decreased risk of death compared with sunitinib-treated patients.

Furthermore, the overall survival rate for 24 months among patients with intermediate-risk and poor-risk disease was considerably superior among those in nivolumab-ipilimumab group than the sunitinib group (66% vs. 53%, respectively). The overall response rate was also significantly higher in the nivolumab-ipilimumab treatment patients than the sunitinib treatment arm (42% vs. 29%), with a complete response rate of 11% vs. 1%, respectively. Progression-free survival at 24 months was 30% in the nivolumab-ipilimumab group compared with 17% in the sunitinib group.