TIVO-3 was a phase 3 clinical trial that compared tivozanib, a selective tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI), with sorafenib, a TKI that was used a decade ago but has gone out of favour because other TKIs are more effective. However, when patients reach their third or fourth treatment, sorafenib is one of the few drugs that is left.

Earlier in the trial, after nearly 3 years of follow-up, 20 patients on tivozanib remained progression free, compared to 2 patients on sorafenib. This is despite there being no positive effect on overall survival (average overall survival was 16.4 months for tivozanib and 19.7 months for sorafenib). However, after a longer follow-up of 4 years there was a small number of patients (about 8-10%) on tivozanib who remained progression-free, while for all patients on sorafanib their cancer got worse. This showed that a small number of patients were getting long-term benefit from tivozanib, while that wasn’t happening with sorafenib. And overall survival was better for tivozanib.

Watch the video interview and read more in UroToday here