Xin Gao, MD, a medical oncologist at Mass General Hospital and Instructor at Harvard Medical School, said these were important findings.

“Analyses of patient-reported outcomes pertaining to health-related quality-of-life measures from CheckMate 9ER showed significantly improved quality-of-life metrics in patients treated with nivolumab plus cabozantinib compared with those treated with sunitinib at essentially all timepoints over the course of the study. Patients receiving nivolumab plus cabozantinib were far less likely to experience deterioration in quality of life over the duration of the study compared with patients who received sunitinib,” Dr. Gao noted.

Xin Gao, MD

“At least a part of this difference appeared to be related to overall improvements in kidney cancer–related symptoms with nivolumab plus cabozantinib, whereas cancer-related symptoms deteriorated more in those treated with sunitinib. I believe this may be a reflection of how terrible the symptoms of advanced kidney cancer can be and the superior clinical efficacy of nivolumab plus cabozantinib,” Dr. Gao emphasized.

“The patient-reported outcomes are a nice adjunct to the efficacy and safety/tolerability data presented previously. We see that the combination of nivolumab plus cabozantinib not only helps patients with advanced kidney cancer live longer, but they actually feel significantly better along the way. There is sometimes a notion that patients with advanced cancer have to make a tradeoff between living longer or living better. The data here show that treatment with nivolumab plus cabozantinib can offer both,” he stated.

DISCLOSURE: Dr. Gao has served as a consultant or advisor to Dendreon and Exelixis and has received institutional research funding from Aprea Therapeutics, Arvinas, Exelixis, Harpoon Therapeutics, Pfizer, and Takeda.