New drug slows advanced kidney cancer

In patients with a type of kidney cancer - Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) - that has spread to other parts of the body may be helped by a dual-action drug called sorafenib, according to preliminary results of a clinical trial reported this week.

In fact, outcomes were so positive that the US Food and Drug Administration is allowing sorafenib to be made available to patients with advanced RCC before its formally approved, according to a press release from Bayer Pharmaceuticals Corporation and Onyx Pharmaceuticals Inc.

Sorafenib inhibits tumor cell growth by targeting both a key enzyme and a growth factor receptor involved in the process, Dr. Bernard Escudier, from Gustave-Roussy Institute in Paris, and colleagues note in their meeting report at the American Society for Clinical Oncology conference.

Investigators in the multinational study randomly assigned 769 patients with previously treated, advanced Renal cell carcinoma to either treatment with sorafenib or to supportive care.

Average survival time free of disease progression was 24 weeks in the sorafenib group and 12 weeks in the supportive care group. By 12 weeks, 79 percent of the patients on sorafenib remained stable compared with 50 percent of the others.

These results are "clinically significant," said Dr. Walter M. Stadler, one of the study investigators based at the University of Chicago.

Interferon is the current standard for treating RCC, and "you get a very modest improvement in survival on the order of one month," Stadler said.

"For years we were looking at things that didn't work, " he commented. "We now have drugs that work in this disease and I think that is incredibly exciting."