Dr. Figlin Discusses Future of RCC Treatment

Robert A. Figlin, MD, director, Division of Hematology/Oncology, Steven Spielberg Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Medicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, discusses the future of treatment for patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Figlin says his goal in this treatment paradigm is the same as it was when he started as a clinician decades ago: to achieve higher response rates, higher complete response rates, and to have more patients become eligible for treatment discontinuation. Some of this has been accomplished, but it is only recently that researchers have started to see the so-called tail of the curve. Some tails of the curve show that maybe up to one-third of patients achieve a duration of response significant enough to come off therapy, explains Figlin. Overall, the goal is to cure these patients and to approach treatment in a way that it will not only control the disease, but make it go away permanently.

For advanced RCC, the treatment paradigm has long consisted of a single-agent TKI in the frontline setting, but now, immunotherapy has come into the mix. Ongoing research is looking at the feasibility of combining checkpoint inhibitors with standard TKIs, and early data has been promising.