Do you know someone who has had kidney cancer? Maybe you’ve heard of a drug called everolimus.
It’s a medicine that doctors are testing to see if it can help people with kidney cancer. The results are looking promising.
How the Drug Was Tested
The UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center recently took part in a big test, or a ‘phase III clinical trial’, of this drug.
The test was called the EVEREST study. Many cancer centers across the country joined in, including some from UC Davis.
The study was led by Dr. Christopher W. Ryan, who works at Oregon Health & Science University. Dr. Primo “Lucky” Lara, Jr., who is the director of the cancer center at UC Davis, was one of the main researchers.
The study looked at people who had kidney cancer and had surgery to remove it.
In the study, patients got either a placebo (a pill with no medicine in it) or 10 milligrams of everolimus every day for 54 weeks. A total of 1,545 patients were in the study.
What the Test Found
So, what did they find? They saw that many patients with kidney cancer were still alive several years after their surgery.
The researchers also saw that everolimus may have helped a group of patients who had the highest risk of their cancer coming back. These patients seemed to stay cancer-free longer.
But everolimus didn’t help everyone in the study. Dr. Lara said that it mainly helped the patients with very high-risk disease.
The patients with intermediate high-risk disease didn’t see an improvement. Even though this is the case, Dr. Lara finds the results encouraging. He thinks that they should keep studying this.
What’s Next?
Everolimus is part of a class of drugs called mTOR inhibitors. These drugs stop cancer cells from growing. Similar drugs are already being used to help other cancer patients after surgery, like people with breast cancer.
The results of the EVEREST study show that everolimus might help kidney cancer patients too. But there’s more work to do.
“We must continue our work to discover and test new agents to improve outcomes in people with kidney cancer,” said Dr. Lara.
The researchers also want to test new medicines as part of clinical trials after surgery, before the cancer has a chance to return and spread.
That way, they hope to help more patients stay cancer-free for longer. It’s an exciting time for kidney cancer research. Let’s hope the good news continues.
If you care about kidney health, please read studies about drug that prevents kidney failure in diabetes, and drinking coffee could help reduce risk of kidney injury.
For more information about kidney health, please see recent studies about foods that may prevent recurrence of kidney stones, and common painkillers may harm heart, kidneys and more.
The study was published in The Lancet.
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