Dr. Balar on Current and Future Standards of Care in Kidney Cancer Treatment

Arjun V. Balar, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, director, Genitourinary Medical Oncology Program, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses the potential of existing targeted therapy coupled with immunotherapy to improve overall survival (OS) in patients with kidney cancer.

In kidney cancer, VEGF-targeted agents are already a standard of care in treating the disease. Because these tumors are immune-responsive, phase I data of the combinations of axitinib (Inlyta) plus pembrolizumab (Keytruda), axitinib plus avelumab (Bavencio), and most recently pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib (Lenvima) are demonstrating very promising response rates upwards of 70%. This demonstrates that there may be synergy between these agents to generate a more effective antitumor immune response.

Ultimately, these agents will lead to new standards of care in the first-line setting. Ongoing randomized trials hope to demonstrate that this combinatorial approach will lead to durable responses and better OS.