
“I was really pleased to take part in a clinical trial.”
This study looked at starting sunitinib before surgery to find out if this improved the treatment for advanced kidney cancer.
Doctors usually treat kidney cancer that has spread with a biological therapy. You may also have surgery before this. So, if you were going to have surgery, you would not start biological therapy straight away. In other cancers, having treatment that reaches your whole body () before surgery can be helpful. So researchers wanted to find out if the same is true for advanced kidney cancer.
Sunitinib is a type of biological therapy called a tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI). TKIs block tyrosine kinase which is a chemical messenger (an enzyme) that sends messages to tell cells to divide and grow. Blocking the effect of tyrosine kinase may stop cancer cells growing.
The aim of this study was to see if having sunitinib before surgery helped people with advanced kidney cancer.
The trial team found that having sunitinib before surgery for advanced kidney cancer is safe and might be a useful treatment.
The trial recruited 33 people with advanced kidney cancer. After 16 weeks of sunitinib:
The trial team were unable to collect information about 2 people.
Of the 33 people in the trial, 21 had surgery to remove their kidney (nephrectomy) following sunitinib. Reasons for not having a nephrectomy included:
Researchers found that having sunitinib before surgery did not increase the chance of problems after surgery.
At the time this paper was written in 2010, the average length of time before the cancer started to grow again (progression free survival) was just over 8 months.
The research team concluded that sunitinib before surgery might be useful for advanced kidney cancer, but that more trials are needed.
We have based this summary on information from the team who ran the trial. The information they sent us has been reviewed by independent specialists () and published in a medical journal. The figures we quote above were provided by the trial team. We have not analysed the data ourselves.
Please note: In order to join a trial you will need to discuss it with your doctor, unless otherwise specified.
Prof Thomas Powles
Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (ECMC)
Orchid Cancer Appeal
Pfizer
Queen Mary University of London
Freephone 0808 800 4040
“I was really pleased to take part in a clinical trial.”