Dr. Hutson on Remaining Questions With the Durability of Immune Responses in RCC

Thomas Hutson, DO, PharmD, director, Urologic Oncology Program, co-chair, Urologic Cancer Research and Treatment Center, Baylor University Medical Center, professor of medicine, Texas A&M College of Medicine, discusses remaining questions regarding the durability of response to immunotherapy in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Of particular interest at the 2020 SITC Virtual Congress will be data that are focused on modifying immune responses with T-cell trafficking and classifying tumors based on immune signatures, Hutson says.

Additionally, developing a greater understanding of whether memory T cells and CTLA-4 play key roles in eliciting long-term durable complete or partial responses is needed in RCC, says Hutson.

Other ongoing trials are attempting to determine the effect of patient characteristics on response durability, Hutson explains. In RCC, classifying tumors to enrich a particular patient population that is likely to derive benefit from immunotherapy may be an effective strategy to help answer this question.

Finally, ongoing research efforts are underway to understand how altering the tumor microenvironment could make a patient more responsive to immunotherapy, concludes Hutson.