A study looking at pazopanib for advanced kidney cancer (Pazo2)

Cancer type:

Kidney cancer

Renal cell cancer

Secondary cancers

Status:

Results

Phase:

Phase 2

This study looked at pazopanib for people with advanced kidney cancer (renal cancer) that hadn’t been treated yet.

This study was open to people whose cancer had spread to another part of the body and couldn’t have surgery to remove the cancer (advanced cancer).

This study was open for people to join between 2012 and 2016. These results were reported in 2018.

Cancer Research UK supported this study.

More about this trial

Pazopanib is a type of targeted cancer drug called a cancer growth blocker. It stops signals that cancer cells use to divide and grow.

Doctors can treat advanced kidney cancer with pazopanib. They usually use it to treat people who have kidney cancer that is not causing them too many symptoms. These are people who are well enough to carry out normal activities, but can’t do heavy physical work (performance status 0 or 1).

In this study, researchers wanted to see if pazopanib worked for people who had symptoms caused by their kidney cancer. These symptoms were affecting their quality of life Open a glossary item

and ability to carry on with their daily routine. They had a general health status of performance status 2.

The aims of this study were to find out:

if pazopanib helped people whose kidney cancer affected their well being and quality of life
more about the side effects

Summary of results

The study team suggest pazopanib is acceptable and works well for people with advanced kidney cancer who have a performance status of 2.

About this study

75 people took part in this phase 2 study. Everyone had pazopanib. The doctors could reduce the dose if the side effects became difficult to cope with.

Everyone had pazopanib until their cancer started to grow again or the side effects became too bad to continue.

At 6 months of treatment the team wanted to know how many people:

didn’t have serious side effects
had stopped treatment for 3 weeks or more due to side effects
were alive and had no sign of their kidney cancer

Results

The team found of the 75 people:

46 didn’t have serious side effects
18 had stopped treatment due to side effects
37 were alive and their cancer hadn’t started to grow again

They also looked at the average length of time people lived without their cancer starting to grow. They found it was 9 months.

Conclusion

These results suggest for people with a performance status of 2, pazopanib is acceptable and worked well.

They also suggest that excluding people from clinical trials Open a glossary item

based only on their performance status might not be appropriate.

Where this information comes from

We have based this summary on information from the research team. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists (peer reviewed Open a glossary item

) but may not have been published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the research team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.