Harold J. Burstein: Important questions about ‘getting to 2nd line therapy.’

Harold J. Burstein, Breast cancer specialist and professor at Dana Farber Cancer Institute, shared a post by Tom Powles on X, adding:

“These type of actual data on treatments are interesting and raise important questions about ‘getting to 2nd line therapy.’

But they beg the Question: If PS/tumor are so ‘bad’ that patient cannot get to 2L, what are data that 2L Rx would work? Most cases like that excluded from trials.”

Quoting Tom Powles post:

“During the period of PD-1 inhibition availability for RCC in the UK only 60% of patients with progressive renal cancers (n>1000) received ICI therapy(1st-3rd line).

This occurred across IMDC risk groups.

Assuming all patients will eventually receive ICI is not supported by data.”

Source: Harold J. Burstein/X and Tom Powles/X

Professor Thomas Powles, specializing in urology cancer, holds the position of Professor at the University of London since 2012 and serves as the Director of Barts Cancer Centre, a CRUK Major Cancer Centre.

With a role in biomarker development and drug strategies, he has secured multiple EMA and FDA approvals. His achievements include advancing front-line immune/targeted therapy combinations in RCC and immune checkpoint inhibition in bladder cancer.