The Changing Landscape of Systemic Therapy in Kidney Cancer

While surgical approaches like nephrectomy and metastasectomy haven’t seen major breakthroughs, there were some data from late-breaking abstracts of phase III trials in systemic therapy for kidney cancer that were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) annual meeting, which should be considered when making treatment decisions.

In this video, Shawn Dason, MD, from The Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center in Columbus, highlights the significant advancements in systemic therapy for kidney cancer in recent years.

Following is a transcript of his remarks:

I think that the biggest thing for kidney cancer is really to understand that systemic therapy is just really making leaps and bounds from what we had 5 years ago. It’s the hope that that will continue to occur. And I think really when we combine our knowledge of what the advances have been in systemic therapy with the rest of our knowledge in the field, we really have to take that into, I guess, a new light.

And so when it comes to thinking about surgery, we haven’t had dramatic advances in nephrectomy and metastasectomy, let’s say. But although we don’t have the data yet, we have to realize that the landscape has changed from where we were 5 years ago. And I guess make the best decisions that we have based on that data.

So, it’s really that systemic therapy is doing a better and better job compared to what it did at any point in the past. And I think that’s really from most of the long-term data that’s being presented so far — late-breaking abstracts of the phase III trials to show longer- and longer-term data and efficacy.