Sunitinib effective in metastatic renal cell cancer

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Sunitinib shows substantial activity in most patients with metastatic clear-cell renal carcinoma, Greek researchers report in a March 12th on-line paper in BMC Cancer. As yet, however, there are no clear indictors of which patients will gain benefit.

Dr. Konstantinos T. Papazisis told Reuters Health, "We report favorable outcomes and a good safety profile, similar to what has been observed in the pivotal trials. We also showed that shrinking the tumor doesn't really matter as long as we are able to stop it growing; patients with disease stabilization or disease remission have a similar overall survival."

Dr. Papazisis, of Theagenion Cancer Hospital, Thessaloniki, and colleagues report on treatment responses in 39 patients, 30 of whom obtained clinical benefit. Median progression-free survival was almost 9 months and median overall survival was more than 16 months.

In investigating possible indicators of response, the researchers found that patients with clinical benefit had significantly lower plasma VEGF increases compared to those with progression after 2 cycles of treatment. However, in patients with initial clinical benefit, subsequent progression did not lead to an increase in plasma VEGF.

Because sunitinib does not benefit every patient, Dr. Papazisis said, "We are on a search for markers that would predict outcome early on in the course of treatment. This would save unnecessary treatment-related side effects and costs."

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