June 2020, Vol 11, No 3

San Francisco, CA—The addition of a second immunotherapy, ipilimumab (Yervoy), to the combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) and cabozantinib (Cabometyx) produced durable responses and longer progression-free survival (PFS) than cabozantinib plus nivolumab alone in patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common type of liver cancer. The overall survival (OS) was not yet reached in the triplet arm.

Although medical cannabis has been used successfully as a palliative therapy in patients with cancer, it is still stigmatized because of its illicit scheduling. However, as research on cannabis use in oncology matures and the stigma begins to fall away, more states are allowing for pharmacist oversight of this product, and its legalization continues to spread.

The first “off-the-shelf” chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell platform targeting CD7 induced a complete response (CR) with no minimal residual disease (MRD) in 4 of the first 5 adults with relapsed or refractory T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) who received treatment with the universal CAR T-cell therapy currently labeled GC027.

San Francisco, CA—The combination of nivolumab (Opdivo) plus the investigational drug sitravatinib improved progression-free survival (PFS) in patients with pretreated metastatic clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (RCC) and the historical disease control rates compared with nivolumab alone, according to the results of a phase 1/2 clinical trial reported at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.

San Francisco, CA—Treatment with the novel agent MK-6482 led to promising results in a phase 1/2 clinical trial of patients with metastatic clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (RCC). In heavily pretreated patients, the objective response rate (ORR) with single-agent MK-6482 was 24%, and a response was consistently seen across patients with favorable-, intermediate-, and poor-risk disease. These results were greeted with optimism at the 2020 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium.