TUESDAY, Jan. 26 (HealthDay News) -- In treatment-naive and cytokine-pretreated patients with advanced and/or metastatic renal cell carcinoma, the oral angiogenesis inhibitor pazopanib may be an effective treatment, according to a study published online Jan. 25 in the Journal of Clinical Oncology to coincide with its presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology's Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium, held from Jan. 22 to 24 in Orlando, Fla.
Cora N. Sternberg, M.D., of the San Camillo Forlanini Hospital in Rome, and colleagues randomly assigned 435 patients to receive oral pazopanib or placebo, including 233 who were treatment-naive and 202 who were cytokine pretreated.
Compared to placebo, the researchers found that pazopanib was associated with a significantly prolonged overall median progression-free survival (9.2 versus 4.2 months). This was also the result in both the treatment-naive subpopulation (11.1 versus 2.8 months) and the cytokine-pretreated subpopulation (7.4 versus 4.2 months). Although adverse effects such as diarrhea, hypertension, hair color changes, nausea, anorexia and vomiting were associated with pazopanib, the researchers found no group differences in measures of quality of life.
"These findings support the continued evaluation of the efficacy, safety, and effect on quality of life of pazopanib in this patient population," the authors conclude. "A phase III trial comparing pazopanib monotherapy with sunitinib in treatment-naive patients with advanced and/or metastatic renal cell carcinoma is ongoing."
This study was supported by GlaxoSmithKline; several authors reported financial relationships with the company.
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