Clinical Outcome of Renal Cancer Patients Who Early Interrupted Immunotherapy Due to Serious Immune-Related Adverse Events. Meet-Uro 13 Trial on Behalf of the MeetUro Investigators - Beyond the Abstract

Immune-Oncology (IO) has been rapidly changing the therapeutic landscape and the natural history of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC). Nevertheless, in mRCC G3-G4 Immune-Related Adverse Events (irAEs) develop in 1.7–19% of patients treated with anti-PD1 and 1.3–10.4% of patients treated with anti-PD1+anti CTLA-4 with consequent treatment interruption.


The Meet-Uro13 trial reports the outcome of metastatic renal cell carcinoma patients who early interrupted IO due to severe irAE. In this trial, we retrospectively collected data from 204 mRCC patients treated with IO in 6 Italian referral centers adhering to the Meet-Uro group, between February 2017 and January 2020. 18/204 (8.8%) patients had treatment interruption for serious (G3-G4) irAEs after one or two administration of ICIs whereas 186 who did not report early G3–G4 toxicities have been included as control group.

According to the results reported in the study, IO seems to maintain efficacy even after early interruption due to irAE. Indeed, 66.6% of patients were free from progression at 6 months since IO interruption, compared to 60.3% in the control group. Furthermore, mPFS was 7.4 months (95% CI 3.16–11.6) whereas mOS was 15.5 months (95 %CI 5.1–25.8) in patients who had G3-G4 irAEs.

Interruption is often required after irAEs, with consequent doubts about treatment efficacy, therefore, this study can be useful for clinicians because, with the limit of a retrospective collection, confirms that mRCC patients maintain benefits of IO, even after early interruption due to irAEs.

Written by: Marco Stellato, Oncologia Medica, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Rome

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