Choueiri and Motzer Chat on CheckMate-9ER and Other RCC Research

Welcome to OncLive On Air^TM! I’m your host today, [Gina Mauro]. 

OncLive On Air^TM is a podcast from OncLive, which provides oncology professionals with the resources and information they need to provide the best patient care. In both digital and print formats, OncLive covers every angle of oncology practice, from new technology to treatment advances to important regulatory decisions. 

Today, we had the pleasure of speaking with Toni K. Choueiri, MD, director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, director of the Kidney Cancer Center, and senior physician at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg chair and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Robert J. Motzer, MD, the Kidney Cancer section head in the genitourinary oncology service and Jack and Dorothy Byrne chair in Clinical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Both Choueiri and Motzer were authors on the CheckMate-9ER study, results of which were recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine and were the basis for the January 2021 approval of nivolumab (Opdivo) and cabozantinib (Cabometyx) as a frontline treatment for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

In the phase 3 CheckMate-9ER trial, investigators set out to examine the safety and efficacy of nivolumab/cabozantinib vs sunitinib (Sutent) as a frontline treatment in patients with advanced RCC with clear-cell histologic features. 

Data showed that the combination of nivolumab and cabozantinib showcased significant benefit in terms of progression-free survival, overall survival, and responses vs sunitinib in the frontline treatment of patients with advanced RCC.

In our exclusive interview, Choueiri and Motzer discussed the clinical implications of the phase 3 CheckMate-9ER trial in advanced RCC and how to best use the combination in practice.