Over the past 10 years or so, the use of immunotherapies has improved the survival of people with advanced kidney cancer, and on average more than 7 in 10 patients now survive for 5 years or more. However, there is significant variability in patient prognosis.

This study looks at real-world data to determine the time to when the treatment stops working and the cancer starts growing again (progression-free survival) and overall survival times and to identify factors that could predict the outcome of patients treated with immunotherapy combinations as a first-line treatment.

Globally, 5,121 patients were included in this study: 2,556 patients were treated with an immunotherapy combination and 2,565 patients were treated with sunitinib. The immunotherapy combination improved the time to when the treatment stopped working and the cancer started growing again and improved overall survival time. There was no significant increase in side effects.

This study showed that progression-free survival and overall survival times are significantly increased in patients with metastatic kidney cancer treated with immunotherapy combinations compared to sunitinib by 32% and 15%, respectively.

Read more in UroToday here