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Elevated BMI was tied to improved survival in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients treated with immune checkpoint inhibitors, a retrospective study found.
In the analysis of more than 700 metastatic RCC patients who received PD-1/L1 immunotherapies, those with a BMI of 25 or greater had significantly longer overall survival (OS), with 1-year rates of 79% versus 66% for those with a BMI below that cutoff (HR 0.75, 95% CI 0.57-0.97,
P=0.03), Toni Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, and colleagues reported. These findings are consistent with the obesity paradox that was previously seen during the VEGF-targeted therapy era, the group wrote in
email article That s a demand that utterly outstrips the supply that we have. Jim Jackson, PsyD, of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, on a study suggesting that many COVID survivors have post-traumatic stress disorder. It s like taking a football and shoving it into a pipe with the diameter of a golf ball. David Nauen, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, about the unexpected presence of megakaryocytes in the brain capillaries of people who died with COVID-19. This is one of those findings where you can hear it at [the Genitourinary Cancers Symposium] and take it to the clinic on Monday. Sumanta Pal, MD, of City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, California, discussing a new option for a rare type of kidney cancer.
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Support for approval came from CheckMate-9ER, a phase III trial that randomized 651 previously untreated patients with advanced RCC to either sunitinib (Sutent) alone or the combination of nivolumab, a PD-1-directed checkpoint inhibitor, plus the tyrosine kinase inhibitor cabozantinib, until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. This combination of cabozantinib and nivolumab significantly improved key efficacy measures compared to sunitinib progression-free survival, overall survival, and objective response rate while showing a low rate of treatment discontinuations due to side effects, investigator Toni Choueiri, MD, of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said in a statement.
Overall survival was significantly improved with nivolumab (240 mg every 2 weeks delivered intravenously) plus oral cabozantinib (40 mg daily) compared with oral sunitinib at standard dosing, with a median not reached in either study arm (HR 0.60, 95% CI 0.40-0.89).