At Global Voices in Renal Oncology (VIRO) 2025, organized by OncoDaily, Dr. Tian Zhang, Associate Professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center, delivered a talk on “Current Standard of Care: IO/IO and IO/TKI Combinations”.
She emphasized that immunotherapy doublets remain the cornerstone of first-line treatment in metastatic renal cell carcinoma, underscoring the importance of tailoring therapy to patient goals and disease characteristics. According to Dr. Zhang, IO/IO regimens such as nivolumab plus ipilimumab offer the potential for durable, long-term survival benefits, with a subset of patients achieving lasting remissions beyond nine years.
In contrast, IO/TKI combinations, including pembrolizumab plus axitinib, nivolumab plus cabozantinib, and lenvatinib plus pembrolizumab, deliver rapid disease control and improved progression-free survival, making them particularly valuable in patients with symptomatic or aggressive disease.
She highlighted that risk stratification using the IMDC criteria remains central to treatment selection, and that ongoing adaptive strategies, such as the Pedigree trial, are further refining the balance between durability and early disease suppression in clinical practice.
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