Iuliia Kovalenko: Tweetorial that explores the toxicity profile of combining immune checkpoint therapy with (VEGFi) in various cancer treatment

Iuliia Kovalenko, PGY-3 IM resident at UPMC Harrisburg, shared the following thread on X:

“In this tweetorial I will cover our new meta analysis in Frontiers of Oncology that explores the toxicity profile of combining immune checkpoint therapy (ICT) with vascular endothelial growth factor inhibitors (VEGFi) in various cancer treatment.

Study method: Systematic search across all cancer types, focusing on phase II/III clinical trials comparing the AEs of ICT + VEGFi with ICT alone.

Results from 7 out of 9366 studies: Increased treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) observed in the ICT + VEGFi group compared to ICT monotherapy (RR:1.49) with more frequent treatment withdrawals (RR:3.10).

We observed significant increase in TRAEs like rash (RR 6.50), hypertension (RR 6.07), hypothyroidism RR 5.02), and diarrhea (RR:4.94) in the combination therapy group.

Other significantly more frequent TRAEs included nausea, anemia, anorexia, and proteinuria.

Important Limitations Alert: Our meta analysis faces challenges: limited peer-reviewed sources, potential bias risk, assumptions on cancer type’s impact on immunotherapy toxicity, and insufficient data on irAEs and prior treatments. Highlights the need for more studies.

Conclusion: ICT combined with VEGFi increases certain TRAEs. Future trials should provide more detailed info on adverse events, especially immune-related ones.

Many thanks to my mentor Omar Alhalabi as well as my co-authors Wern Lynn Ng, Pavlos Msaouel, Shailender Bhatia, Petros Grivas, Raed Benkhadra. Please check out the full paper for more details.”

Source: Iuliia Kovalenko/X