Adjuvant Pembrolizumab for Intermediate- and High-Risk Renal Cell Carcinoma

Sumanta “Monty” K. Pal, MD, FASCO, professor, Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research and co-director, Kidney Cancer Program at the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center, discuss exciting data in the renal cell carcinoma space.

According to Pal, adjuvant pembrolizumab (Keytruda) represents a new standard-of-care for the treatment of adjuvant treatment of patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) at intermediate-high or high risk of recurrence following nephrectomy or following nephrectomy and resection of metastatic lesions. The therapy was granted FDA approval for this indication in 2021 but more phase 3 data were presented recently.

The results a continued disease-free survival (DFS) benefit with adjuvant pembrolizumab vs placebo (HR, 0.63, 95% CI, 0.50-0.80; nominal P < .0001) in the KEYNOTE-564 (NCT03142334).

Additionally, in the subgroup population of patients with intermediate- and high-risk disease, the DFS hazard ratios were in favor of the adjuvant pembrolizumab arm. Adjuvant pembrolizumab was also safe and tolerable with grade 3 or higher adverse event having occurred in 32.4% of the patients who received pembrolizumab and in 17.7% of the placebo group.

TRANSCRIPT:

0:08 | In my mind, the most interesting data that came out for renal cell carcinoma had to do with updates on adjuvant treatment. This basically just bolstered data that we heard last year from the KEYNOTE 564 trial that looked at pembrolizumab versus placebo in the adjuvant setting. The study really identified a persistent, durable benefit from pembrolizumab in terms of disease-free survival. I think it's encouraging for patients and for practitioners to see that the overall survival seems to be trending in the right direction as well. I think that's certainly a good omen for both patients [and providers]. It's also a good omen for the trials that are impending. I'm running a clinical trial looking at adjuvant atezolizumab [Tecentriq] and I'm hoping that that trial has a very similar fate.