The results of the CONTACT-03 study with atezolizumab plus cabozantinib for the second-line treatment of metastatic kidney cancer were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chacago, USA this week. The CONTACT-03 study was designed to look at the effectiveness of immunotherapy plus TKI after previous immunotherapy treatment had failed. The researchers thought that the addition of cabozantinib to atezolizumab may improve survival in these patients. Unfortunately, the combination of atezolizumab plus cabozantinib failed to improve the time to when the treatment stopped working and the cancer started growing again in patients who had stopped responding to previous immunotherapy.

The side effects from the combination of atezolizumab plus cabozantinib were like those seen when the medicines are taken alone.

Although the results from this study are negative, they could potentially change clinical practice with respect to the type of second-line treatment. It will encourage researchers to look at other treatment combinations for patients who had failed to respond to immunotherapy.

Read more in The Lancet here