OncLive News Network On Location: In Munich Sunday, October 21

Today-

We are on site at the Messe in Munich, Germany at the 2018 ESMO Congress!

We’ll be recapping some of the top news presented each day during the meeting—and soon we’ll speak with Dr Kathleen Moore on data being presented in ovarian cancer, and Dr Sunil Verma on the practice-changing breast cancer studies.

Welcome to OncLive News Network! I’m Gina Columbus.

In renal cell carcinoma, phase III data of the JAVELIN RENAL 101 trial showed that the combination of the PD-L1 inhibitor avelumab and the tyrosine kinase inhibitor axitinib improves progression-free survival and overall response rates compared with sunitinib in treatment-naïve patients with advanced disease.

Moreover, the benefit was shown regardless of PD-L1 expression, and the safety profiles of each drug were consistent with reports from prior studies.

These findings suggest that avelumab and axitinib could be the new frontline standard of care for advanced renal cell carcinoma.

*********************************

Also in kidney cancer, an analysis of the phase III IMmotion151 trial showed that distinct gene signatures correlated with improved progression-free survival with immunotherapy or a targeted agent.

A signature reflecting high T-effector cell expression was linked with a significant improvement in PFS with the combination of atezolizumab and bevacizumab versus sunitinib. The combination also led to a numerically better PFS in tumors with a signature reflecting low expression of genes associated with angiogenesis. Moreover, sunitinib performed better in tumors with the angiogenesis signature.

*****************************************

Extended follow-up data from the CheckMate-032 study demonstrtaed a trend toward higher overall responses and longer progression-free survival with the combination of nivolumab at 1 mg/kg plus ipilimumab at 3 mg/kg in patients with platinum-pretreated metastatic urothelial carcinoma.

The multicenter phase I/II trial included 3 cohorts; nivolumab monotherapy at 3 mg/kg, nivolumab 3 mg/kg plus ipilimumab 1 mg/kg, and N1/I3.

It was reported that the higher dosage of ipilimumab was linked to more activity with an acceptable toxicity profile. The N1/I3 dose showed an approximately 12% higher response rate, and the duration of response appeared longer.

Results of a pre-planned analysis of the STAMPEDE trial demonstrated that radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men newly diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer with a low metastatic disease burden. However, the treatment does not have the same outcomes in those with higher burden of disease.

The multi-arm, multi-stage STAMPEDE study included a randomized phase III comparison to evaluate whether radiotherapy to the prostate improves overall survival in men with newly diagnosed metastatic disease. This was based on the hypothesis that primary tumors could contribute to overall disease progression and shorter survival in men with metastatic prostate cancer.

************************************

The PARP niraparib demonstrated durable clinical activity in the fourth-line or later setting in patients with relapsed BRCA-mutant ovarian cancer who have BRCA mutations, according to a posthoc analysis of the phase II QUADRA study.

Additionally, the efficacy of niraparib in this setting appeared to be greater in patients who were sensitive to their last line of platinum therapy, as there was a longer median progression-free survival in this subset versus those who were platinum-resistant or platinum-refractory.

************************************

Also in ovarian cancer, findings from the phase III SOLO-1 trial showed that the 2-year use of the PARP inhibitor olaparib as maintenance therapy led to a significant improvement in progression-free survival for patients with advanced disease who harbor BRCA1/2 mutations.

Olaparib demonstrated this activity in patients with newly diagnosed disease with advanced ovarian cancer and harbor BRCA1/2 mutations. This study is also the first large dataset of prospectively collected outcomes for this population of women.

For a full review of these topics, please visit OncLive.com.

That’s all for today. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s OncLive News Network: On Location, where we will sit down with Dr. Dan George of Duke Cancer Institute on genitourinary cancer studies, Dr Ezra Cohen on pivotal head and neck cancer abstracts, and Dr Suresh Ramalingam from Winship Cancer Institute and Emory University on new lung cancer data.

Thank you for watching OncLive News Network! I’m Gina Columbus.