Kidney Cancer Vaccine Shows No Boost in Survival (HealthDay)

FRIDAY, July 3 (HealthDay News) -- The new vaccine vitespendidn't increase recurrence-free survival among kidney cancer patientswho'd had surgery, say U.S. researchers.

Surgery is standard treatment for kidney cancer, but many patients areat risk of cancer recurrence because there is no effective adjuvanttreatment, according to background information in the study by Dr.Christopher Wood, of the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, andcolleagues.

For this study, 818 kidney cancer patients who'd had surgery weredivided into two groups. One group (409) received vitespen once a week forfour weeks, then every two weeks until vaccine depletion. The other 409patients were kept under observation.

The final analysis of 361 patients in the vitespen group and 367patients in the observation group found no significant difference inrecurrence-free survival. But an analysis of a subgroup of patients withearly-stage kidney cancer showed a 15.2 percent rate of recurrence amongthose who received vitespen and a 27 percent rate of recurrence amongpatients kept under observation.

While this wasn't a statistically significant difference, theresearchers said the improvement in recurrence-free survival amongpatients with early-stage cancer who received the vaccine warrants furtherinvestigation.

The study was published online this week in The Lancet.

In an accompanying comment, Dr. James Yang, of U.S. National CancerInstitute, noted that the manufacturers of vitespen have focused on onepossible positive outcome of this study, rather than the overall negativeresults.

"Such practices are akin to shooting the arrow first and beingpermitted to draw the target afterwards," he wrote.

The field of cancer immunotherapy is weakened when some researchers andvaccine companies are reluctant to accept the results of randomizedclinical trials, Yang said.

"Commercially driven efforts that spin or obfuscate the conclusions ofsuch a trial should be vigorously resisted because such efforts severelyerode its value," he concluded.

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