Kidney Health Current Topics in Kidney Health

Promising News for Kidney Cancer Patients

Each year in the United States, more than 30,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer. Last week they received promising news from the cancer research community.

Researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) reported that bevacizumab, a molecularly targeted drug, slowed the growth of tumors in patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma, the most common form of kidney cancer in adults. Results of the randomized clinical trial were presented at the American Society for Clinical Oncology meeting in Orlando, Fla.

The phase II, double-blind clinical trial involved 116 patients with advanced stage cancer. They were randomly selected to receive placebo (no drug), a low dose of bevacizumab(3 mg/kg), or a high dose (10 mg/kg) of the drug.

In patients receiving the high dose of bevacizimab, tumor growth was significantly slowed down - it took 5 months to observe measurable growth of the tumor compared with 2 months in patients receiving placebo. A positive but smaller effect on tumor growth was also seen in patients receiving the lower dose of bevacizumab.

Bevacizumab works like other molecularly targeted drugs, by specifically interfering with a process in the body that encourages tumor growth or survival. Bevacizumab targets the process of angiogenesis, or the growth of new blood vessels that supply oxygen and nutrients necessary for the tumor to grow. It neutralizes one of the many proteins secreted by the tumor cells to encourage development of a new network of blood vessels. By neutralizing this protein, bevacizumab inhibits tumor growth.

Bevacizumab is also being tested as a treatment in a number of other cancers. It is in phase III trials for breast and colorectal cancer, and phase II trials for prostate, breast, colorectal, cervical, ovarian, pancreatic, and lung cancers, as well as for mesothelioma and a number of different types of leukemia.