Dr. Choueiri on the CheckMate-9ER Exploratory Analysis in Advanced 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 results from an exploratory analysis of the phase 3 CheckMate-9ER trial (NCT03141177) in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

The exploratory analysis of the study, which was presented during the 2021 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, provided updated survival data with longer follow-up, according to Choueiri. The results demonstrated that the benefits achieved with cabozantinib (Cabometyx) plus nivolumab (Opdivo) over sunitinib (Sutent) in terms of overall survival and progression-free survival were sustained.

Additionally, investigators examined patient-reported outcomes and health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in patients who received the doublet. At the 2020 ESMO Virtual Congress, investigators reported on the FKSI-19 and FKSI-DRS, however, HRQoL findings were examined further in depth at the GU Symposium, Choueiri says. Even with more reporting, the HRQoL data, which included time to treatment deterioration, as measured by EQ-5D-5L, continued to strongly favor cabozantinib/nivolumab over sunitinib, Choueiri concludes.