New Two-Drug Kidney Cancer Treatment Found

U.S. cancer researchers have discovered a two-drug combination that works better than either drug alone for patients with renal cell carcinoma.

We found that by combining a drug that enlists the immune system’s help in combating cancer with one that cuts off a tumor’s blood supply, we could substantially increase patients’ response rates to treatment, said Dr. Jared Gollob, who led the study with colleagues at the Duke University Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Interferon alpha, an immunotherapy agent, helps the body fight infections and tumors but kidney tumors only respond to interferon alpha about 5 percent to 10 percent of the time, Gollob said.

The second drug, sorafenib (Nexavar), interferes with a tumor’s blood supply, thereby restricting its growth. But sorafenib causes substantial tumor shrinkage in only 5 percent to 10 percent of patients.

Most tumors that respond to either therapy alone begin growing again after about five or six months, Gollob said. By using interferon alpha and sorafenib in combination, we not only increased the response rate, but found we could double the amount of time these patients could survive without their tumors growing.

The research appears in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.