Summary
RCC now has multiple TKI"S either approved or in development for tx
The disease control rate seems to be a popular and effective endpoint to get drugs for RCC approved
Analysis
The treatment of RCC has changed dramatically over the past few years from being one with limited options to one of man options. If your lucky enough to be in a country that still values the lives of cancer patients, you have access to them. Sorry UK patients!! The use of targeted therapy has allowed disease control rate to be an acceptable endpoint in cancer therapy, as the side effects , unlike chemo, has allowed a maintenance approach to using the drugs. RCC is a chemo resistant disease and it is likely to the physiologic mechanisms designed in the renal tubials to be tolerant to cytotoxins, as urine can be one. Therefore the biologics have been our only choice, with IL-2 being the omnly one with any cahnce of working albeit at the risk of death, surpassing SCTs. Now we are likely to see this plethora of drugs undergo combination use, with recent reports indicating it may be at the expense of unacceptable toxicity. It does not mean we can keep looking and ultimately may give a brief course of combination, with a single agent used as maintenance. Don't worry big Pharma. Most likely a RCC patient will go through all of the drugs before they succumb to the illness, unless two are so much alike it is neither approved or reasonable.
Donald Fleming consults with leading institutions through GLG
Analyses are solely the work of the authors and have not been edited or endorsed by GLG.
