What is the optimum systemic treatment for advanced/metastatic renal cell carcinoma of favourable, intermediate and poor risk, respectively? A systematic review and network meta-analysis

PurposeThe optimum systemic therapies for advanced/metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) of favourable, intermediate and poor risk have not been established. We aimed to compare and rank the effects associated with systemic therapies in the first-line setting.MethodsWe searched PubMed, Cochrane databases, Web of Science and ClinicalTrials.gov for randomised controlled trials (RCT) published up to February 2020 of all available treatments for advanced/metastatic RCC. Analysis was done on a Bayesian framework.Results15 unique RCTs including 8995 patients were identified. For advanced/metastatic RCC of favourable risk, avelumab plus axitinib was associated with a significantly higher improvement in progression-free survival (PFS) than sunitinib (HR 0.57, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.96). For intermediate-risk patients, cabozantinib, nivolumab plus ipilimumab, pembrolizumab plus axitinib and avelumab plus axitinib were associated with significantly higher improvement in PFS than sunitinib (HR 0.63, 95% CI 0.44 to 0.97; HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.53 to 0.81; HR 0.58, 95% CI 0.44 to 0.80; HR 0.62, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.83, respectively); pembrolizumab plus axitinib and nivolumab plus ipilimumab were associated with significantly higher improvement in overall survival (OS) than sunitinib (HR 0.53, 95% CI 0.34 to 0.81; HR 0.66, 95% CI 0.50 to 0.87, respectively). For poor-risk patients, nivolumab plus ipilimumab and pembrolizumab plus axitinib were associated with significantly higher improvement in PFS than sunitinib (HR 0.57, 95% CI 0.43 to 0.76; HR 0.48, 95% CI 0.30 to 0.82, respectively); nivolumab plus ipilimumab and pembrolizumab plus axitinib were significantly more efficacious for OS than sunitinib (HR 0.57, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.883; HR 0.43, 95% CI 0.23 to 0.80, respectively). For OS, there were 81% and 78% probabilities that pembrolizumab plus axitinib was the best option for intermediate-risk and poor-risk patients, respectively.ConclusionAvelumab plus axitinib might be the optimum treatment for advanced/metastatic RCC of favourable risk. Pembrolizumab plus axitinib might be the optimum treatment for intermediate-risk and poor-risk patients.