For patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) progressing after sorafenib treatment, tivozanib was well tolerated and provided promising survival outcomes, investigators in a phase 2 study have reported.
Incidence of adverse events on tivozanib was low, and the safety profile was favorable in comparison with other agents in its class, the investigators said in the European Journal of Cancer.
The findings also help clarify results of a previous randomized phase 3 trial of tivozanib versus sorafenib where the investigators say crossover may have confounded overall survival results to the detriment of the tivozanib arm.
“Collectively, these data provide evidence of the anti-tumor activity of tivozanib and may be used to help frame future studies in recurrent disease,” wrote Ana M. Molina, MD, of Weill Cornell Medicine, New York, and her coauthors.
Tivozanib, recently approved in Europe for untreated RCC, is characterized by highly potent and selective inhibition of the three known vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptors.
Dr. Molina and her colleagues reported a single-arm crossover study of patients who were previously enrolled in the randomized phase 3 TIVO-1 trial of tivozanib versus sorafenib.
They enrolled a total of 161 patients who were randomized to the sorafenib arm of TIVO-1 and went on to receive tivozanib after disease progression.