In patients with clear cell kidney cancer 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 cancer as adjuvant therapy, i.e. after surgery to remove the tumor. Although the treatment had been shown to have important clinical efficacy and keep patients free of the disease for a long period of time, there were still no consolidated data on the survival advantage.
The new trial, which followed almost 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 at Dana-Farber, in a statement. Boston Cancer Institute.