ESMO 2016 | Biomarkers of response and resistance in kidney cancer

Toni Choueiri, MD of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA provides an overview of his talk on biomarkers of response and resistance with a focus on kidney cancer and nivolomab, held as part of a session on immunotherapy in genitourinary cancer (GU) at the 2016 annual meeting of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO), held in Copenhagen, Denmark. He discusses the challenges of PD-L1 immunohistochemistry as a biomarker of response; currently it is a prognostic marker only. Dr Choueiri then discusses genomics and the activity CTLA-4, PD-L1 and PD-1 blockers in other non-GU malignacies. Further, he talks about biomarkes while on therapy and data on resistance. He explains that he finished with a provocative conclusion: that we should also look for biomakers outside the tissue.