Dr. Zhang on Emerging Biomarkers of Response to Immunotherapy in RCC

Tian Zhang, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at Duke University School of Medicine, and member, Duke Cancer Institute, discusses emerging biomarkers that are helping to guide treatment for patients with renal cell carcinoma.

Currently, there are not many molecular markers available to help determine which patients might respond to immunotherapy-based regimens, Zhang says. However, across multiple phase 3 clinical trials, the sarcomatoid differentiation is picking up a group of patients who are more likely to be immunogenic and immunoresponsive, Zhang notes.

Trials such as the phase 3 CheckMate-214 (NCT02231749), the phase 3 KEYNOTE-426 (NCT02853331), and the phase 3 IMmotion151 (NCT02420821) have reported on subsets of patients with sarcomatoid differentiation who have derived more benefit from immunotherapy combinations compared with sunitinib (Sutent), Zhang explains. This indicates that this group of patients could respond better to an immunotherapy-based regimen overall, Zhang concludes.