Kidney Cancer Drugs Equal in Prolonging Survival

The drug pazopanib (Votrient) works as well as sunitinib (Sutent) for treating advanced kidney cancer, but it has milder side effects, a new study finds.

Although both drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as first-line treatments for kidney cancer and both boost survival, pazopanib had the edge in improving the quality of life, the researchers reported.

"Kidney cancer has long been considered one of the most difficult-to-treat cancers, and is associated with a poor prognosis when it's metastasized [or spreading]," said lead researcher.

Now there are drugs that attack a gene that is responsible for turning kidney cells into cancer cells, he said. "There has been tremendous progress in the treatment of this disease since 2005 with these targeted drugs,"he said. "The first of these drugs was sunitinib, which is considered the standard in first-line treatment for kidney cancer."

This new trial was a head-to-head comparison of sunitinib and pazopanib. The researchers found both had a similar safety profile and survival benefit, but there were milder side effects with pazopanib, Motzer said. These included less fatigue and fewer sores on the bottom of the feet, he noted.

"The data also suggest that patients on pazopanib have a better quality of life than patients on sunitinib," he said. Both drugs cost about the same -- about $6,500 a month -- and are covered by Medicare and many private insurers.

"Both these drugs are good options for first-line treatment," he said. "They allow for us to individualize treatment for patients. In my own practice, I have changed my preferred drug from sunitinib over to pazopanib, because most patients appear to have a better quality of life with pazopanib compared with sunitinib."

A urologist , said that "this study shows that there is more than one option for first-line therapy for renal [kidney] cancer."

According to him, 65,000 people are diagnosed with kidney cancer each year in the United States. "It's the sixth most common cancer," he said. And because it is often diagnosed late, 30 percent to 50 percent of the patients develop metastasis, he added. "It's one of the top 10 cancer killers," he noted.

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