Lenvima-Keytruda Continues to Show Benefit in Advanced Kidney Cancer

Lenvima (lenvatinib) plus Keytruda (pembrolizumab) improved outcomes in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma — the most common type of kidney cancer — compared to those treated with Sutent (sunitinib), according to extended follow-up from the randomized, phase 3 CLEAR trial, which was published in the Lancet Oncology.

The trial, which included 1,417 patients with clear-cell advanced renal cell carcinoma who previously did not have any medication for the disease, randomly assigned participants to one of three groups:

• Lenvima plus Keytruda
• Lenvima plus Afinitor (everolimus)
• Sutent

Patients in the Lenvima/Keytruda group lived for an average of 27.8 months without their disease getting worse (a metric known as “progression-free survival”), compared to 19.4 months for patients in the Sutent group.

Of note, results from the Lenvima/Afinitor group were not included in the updated analysis.

Average overall survival, which is the time from treatment until death of any cause, was 33.7 months in the Lenvima plus Keytruda group, compared with 33.4 months in the Sutent group.

These data are consistent with prior results from CLEAR that were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in June 2022, which showed that at the 24-month mark, 72.2% of patients given Lenvima plus Keytruda were alive on their second line of treatment, compared with 54.2% in the Sutent group.

READ MORE: Lenvima Plus Keytruda May Become Next Standard-of-Care Treatment Option for Advanced Kidney Cancer

According to the study authors, these findings set the stage for using Lenvima plus Keytruda as standard of care for the frontline treatment of this patient population.

“Efficacy benefits of (Lenvima) plus (Keytruda) over (Sutent) were durable and clinically meaningful with extended follow-up,” they wrote. “These results support the use of (Lenvima) plus (Keytruda) as a first-line therapy for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.”

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