GU Cancers 2026 | Overcoming resistance to frontline immunotherapy in kidney cancer
Tian Zhang, MD, UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, comments on the limitations of current frontline immunotherapy doublets in kidney cancer, highlighting the need to investigate precise mechanisms of resistance to help patients who progress past initial treatments. Clinicians will need to understand the importance of understanding and addressing the downregulation of tumor antigens and re-engaging the immune system, underscoring the value of trials like BOOST-RCC (NCT06284564) in this context. This interview took place at the 2026 ASCO GU Cancers Symposium in San Francisco, CA.
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Transcript
So unfortunately, even with the number of immunotherapy doublets now that we have in the frontline space, our patients are still progressing past frontline treatments. And so I think we need to start thinking more about precise mechanisms of resistance and what we can do to help those patients navigate through and sequence other types of treatments. And so testing out these mechanisms of, you know, is there downregulation of tumor antigen? And that’s why we’ve lost the tumor immunity...
So unfortunately, even with the number of immunotherapy doublets now that we have in the frontline space, our patients are still progressing past frontline treatments. And so I think we need to start thinking more about precise mechanisms of resistance and what we can do to help those patients navigate through and sequence other types of treatments. And so testing out these mechanisms of, you know, is there downregulation of tumor antigen? And that’s why we’ve lost the tumor immunity. Can we re-engage the immune system? That’s why trials like this, trials like BOOST, RCC, are really important for our patient populations.
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