Timing of Maximum Tumor Shrinkage May Predict mRCC Pt Survival

NEW ORLEANS—The timing of maximum tumor shrinkage in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) may be useful as a biomarker for predicting overall survival, Japanese researchers reported at the 2015 American Urological Association annual meeting.

Takafumi Yagisawa, MD, and colleagues at Tokyo Women’s Medical University, based this conclusion on a study of 199 mRCC patients receiving first-line systemic therapy with targeted agents. The study showed that the 81 patients who had maximum tumor shrinkage within 3 months—as measured by computed tomography (CT)—had significantly longer overall survival than the 48 patients who had maximum shrinkage after 3 months (22.8 vs. 14.3 months).

The agents used for first-line therapy included sunitinib (71 patients), sorafenib (47 patients), pazopanib (4 patients), and temsirolimus (7 patients).