Dr. Choueiri on the Results of the KEYNOTE-564 Study in RCC

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 the Jerome and Nancy Kohlberg chair and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, discusses the results of the KEYNOTE-564 study (NCT03142334) in renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

KEYNOTE-564 was a randomized, phase 3 trial that evaluated the safety and efficacy of pembrolizumab (Keytruda) vs placebo as adjuvant therapy for patients with RCC post nephrectomy. The results, which were presented during the 2021 AUA Annual Meeting, demonstrated that adjuvant pembrolizumab significantly improved disease-free survival (DFS) compared with placebo, meeting the primary end point of the study, Choueiri says. Grade 3 to 5 all-cause adverse effects were reported in more patients treated with pembrolizumab compared with placebo, Choueiri says. 

Overall, the DFS benefit was maintained across all evaluated subgroups, including region, type of nephrectomy, sarcomatoid features, disease-risk category, tumor grade, and PD-L1 status, Choueiri concludes.