Dr. McGregor on Immunotherapy Combinations in Kidney Cancer

Bradley McGregor, MD, physician, Genitourinary Oncology program, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, instructor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, discusses combinations of immunotherapy for patients with kidney cancer.

Two phase III trials that are investigating immunotherapy combinations are CheckMate-214 and IMmotion151. CheckMate-214 investigated nivolumab (Opdivo) and ipilimumab (Yervoy), whereas IMmotion151 investigated atezolizumab (Tecentriq) and bevacizumab (Avastin). The CheckMate-214 study saw impressive complete response (CR) rates of 16% for patients with PD-L1 expression.

IMmotion151 also had a CR rate of 9%. The most appealing aspect of that trial was the low toxicity profile. In CheckMate-214, it seemed to only work best for intermediate- and poor-risk patients, says McGregor. But, in the IMmotion151 study, there was a benefit across all subgroups, independent of risk status.

There are multiple ongoing phase III trials inspired by phase I data that showed impressive response rates. The hope is that those response rates translate into the phase III trials and improve CR rates.