A Physician’s Take on the CLEAR Trial Data

Video

Brian Shimkus, MD, shares his opinion of data on lenvatinib and pembrolizumab from the CLEAR trial.

Tom Powles, MBBS, MRCP, MD: Hi, I'm Tom Powles. I'm an oncologist from London. I look after patients with urology cancers, particularly bladder and kidney cancer, which we're talking about today. Brian, would you like to introduce yourself?

Brian Shimkus, MD: Yes. I'm Brian Shimkus. I'm a physician in Austin, Texas; private practice in a multi-specialty group. I don't specialize in any particular kind of cancer, but I enjoy genitourinary cancers and work closely with a very large group close to us. I've always been fond of treating renal cell carcinoma.

Tom Powles, MBBS, MRCP, MD: Brian, we just saw Bob Watson present the CLEAR data published in New England Journal [of Medicine]. There's been a later data cut more recently. The data looked impressive, with the response rate above 70%. The hazard ratio for PFS in the 0.39, I think, and the OS survival data significant at about 0.70. The total RB profile was okay. I think these combinations are challenging to give, more challenging than the single agent therapy, certainly. What was your take on the data overall in the paper?

Brian Shimkus, MD: I think it's amazing. If you look back, I've been practicing for about 20 years and going from renal cell carcinoma as a disease with interleukin therapy as the only option to something where we have all of these options, and now can decide how we want to treat people based on side effect profiles. It really gives them a bright outcome now. I've gone from treating people with single agents to getting better at treatment with multi-agent therapy. I think that really is the key here, as I see in this study. That's one of the big take-away points, is that the better you get at this, the more experience you have with multi-agent therapy, the better your patients are going to do. It becomes critical to understand how best to use these drugs, not just knowing which drugs are available.

Transcript edited for clarity.

Recent Videos
One of the largest obstacles to tackle in the kidney cancer landscape will be translating the research on rare kidney cancer subtypes into clinical trials.
Zanzalitinib exhibited favorable data when evaluated alone or in combination with anti-PD-1 immune checkpoint inhibition in phase 1 RCC trials.
The investigational agent exhibited superior efficacy vs pembrolizumab in patients with lung cancer, suggesting potential efficacy in kidney cancer.
“As a community, if we’re looking to help enroll and advocate for patients with rare [kidney cancers], we need to be aware of what is out there,” said A. Ari Hakimi, MD.
Treatment with the dual inhibitor displayed a short half-life and a manageable toxicity profile in patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
The annual Kidney Cancer Research Summit was born from congressional funding for kidney cancer research, according to KidneyCAN president Bryan Lewis.
Combining renal vaccines with immune therapy may better target tumor cells while limiting harm to healthy tissue, according to David A. Braun, MD, PhD.
Improving data collection and biomarker development across institutions may represent areas of expansion in kidney cancer research.
KIM-1 is a biomarker in the blood that may help noninvasively detect kidney cancer, according to Wenxin (Vincent) Xu, MD.
A phase 0 trial is seeking to assess the feasibility of aiding anti-cancer cells with cytokines to restore their function.
Related Content