European Medical Journal Oncology (Nov 2015)
Cabozantinib Versus Everolimus in Patients with Advanced Renal Cell Carcinoma: Results of a Randomised Phase III Trial (METEOR)
Abstract
The METEOR trial of cabozantinib versus everolimus in advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was reported by Prof Choueiri at the European Cancer Congress 2015. This presentation follows the publication in the New England Journal of Medicine of the METEOR trial back-to-back with the CheckMate 025 trial of nivolumab versus everolimus in the same patient setting. Excitingly, these trials demonstrated, for the first time, significant benefits over the standard of care for heavily pre-treated patients with advanced RCC. Cabozantinib, an oral multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) aims to address the challenge of resistance to targeted therapy with TKIs. While the METEOR trial has not yet reached its final analysis of overall survival (OS), the clear progression-free survival (PFS) benefit, acceptable safety profile, and similar tolerability to other TKIs shown by cabozantinib indicate that this represents a promising new treatment option for second-line or subsequent therapy for patients with advanced RCC.