Dr. Ornstein on Role of IL-2 in Patients With RCC

Moshe Ornstein, MD, staff, Cleveland Clinic, discusses the role of interleukin-2 (IL-2) going forward in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

In 2017, when there are targeted therapies and immunotherapy agents, the benefit of IL-2 in metastatic RCC is that, for a subset of patients, it is one of the only therapies for which researchers have long-term data and long-term durable complete remissions (CRs).

One of the challenges with high-dose IL-2 is patient selection as it is a fairly toxic regimen with a reasonable mortality and morbidity rate, Ornstein explains. Although it is low, it still must be balanced against the durable CRs. Unfortunately, there no current predictive markers. Therefore, it is up to individual physicians to decide with their patients whether they are best suited to tolerate the toxicity of IL-2.

IL-2 is generally administered to young patients with minimal comorbidities who have clear cell RCC who don’t have metastases in the bone or in the brain, he adds.