Efficacy of immune-checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) combination as a first-line (1L) therapy in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) with sarcomatoid histology: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Abstract

692 Background: Sarcomatoid mRCC exhibits poor prognosis and limited response to vascular endothelial growth factor pathway inhibition. Therefore, we assessed the efficacy of ICI combination therapy in this patient population using data from contemporary trials. Methods: MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched to identify phase III randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing the efficacy of ICI combinations with sunitinib monotherapy in patients with sarcomatoid mRCC. Patient important outcomes of interest included overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), objective response rate (ORR), and complete response (CR). Precomputed hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) for survival outcomes and binary outcome data for response rates (expressed as relative risk [RR] were meta-analyzed using a DerSimonian-Lairds random-effects method. Mixed treatment comparisons among different ICI combinations were made using a network-meta-analysis within the Bayesian framework. The surface under the cumulative ranking curves (SUCRA) were computed to assess the relative treatment rankings. Results: Six RCTs with a total of 618 patients were considered eligible for inclusion. ICI combination therapy was significantly associated with improved OS (HR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.43-0.72) and PFS (HR: 0.50; 0.40-0.62), increased ORR (RR: 2.42; 1.92-3.06), and CR (RR: 4.23; 2.00-8.93) when compared to sunitinib in patients with sarcomatoid mRCC (Table). The results were consistent with Hartung-Knapp adjustment. Mixed treatment comparisons using current data revealed no statistically significant differences among different ICI combinations. However, the combination of nivolumab-ipilimumab was consistently ranked higher (rank 2 for OS, ORR, and CR) and may potentially be more efficacious than other counterparts. Conclusions: Current evidence suggests improved survival, delayed disease progression and increased response rates with the use of ICI combination therapy in patients with sarcomatoid mRCC. [Table: see text]