In patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma at high risk of recurrence, treatment with the immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab after surgery increases the chances of survival. This is the data that emerges from a phase III clinical trial whose data were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Pembrolizumab is a drug that belongs to the family of so-called immune checkpoint inhibitors. It is indicated for various tumors and, from 2021, also for kidney tumors as adjuvant therapy, i.e. after surgery to remove the tumor. Although the treatment had demonstrated significant clinical efficacy and kept patients disease-free for a long period of time, there were no consolidated data on the survival advantage yet.
The new trial, which followed nearly 500 patients treated with pembrolizumab for about 6 years, has now shown that the treatment reduces the risk of death by 38% compared to placebo.
“Now we can tell our patients that pembrolizumab after surgery not only delays relapses, but helps them live longer,” said study lead author Toni Choueiri, director of the Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, in a statement. at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
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