A retrospective study recently reported in Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer looked at the survival of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients who were assessed using the International Metastatic RCC Database Consortium (IMDC) for RCC risk and treated with high dose interleukin-2 (IL-2). These patients were entered on the PROCLAIMSM data base.

The patients were followed for a median of 23.4 months to compare survival outcomes across the different risk groups. For patients with favourable risk, median overall survival was 63.3 months, 42.4 months for those with intermediate risk, and 14 months for those with poor risk. Two-year overall survival rates were 77.6%, 68.2%, and 40.4% for the favourable-, intermediate-, and poor-risk groups, respectively.

The researchers concluded that these survival data are consistent with recent data from clinical trials of checkpoint or targeted therapies for metastatic RCC. Overall survival is longer for patients with favourable or intermediate risk compared with those with poor risk. High-dose IL-2 therapy is, therefore, appropriate for eligible patients with metastatic RCC.

Read more in Journal for Immunotherapy of Cancer here