Conditions: Metastatic Renal Cell Carcinoma
Keywords: Kidney Renal Cell Metastatic interleukin-2 select
Allocation: NA | Intervention model: SINGLE_GROUP
Enrollment: 123
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
High-dose interleukin 2 (Proleukin, Novartis) (IL-2) is approved by the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of metastatic kidney cancer and is a standard treatment of this disease. At the present time, IL-2 is the only therapy for kidney cancer that can produce a remission of disease that lasts after treatment is completed. However, most patients who receive IL-2 do not benefit and all patients experience potentially dangerous side effects.

Recent research has suggested that certain patients may respond better to IL-2 than others. The Cytokine Working Group is currently conducting a clinical trial that aims to identify and confirm this research and narrow the application of IL-2 to those patients most likely to benefit.

Detailed description:
OBJECTIVES:

Primary

* To determine, in a prospective fashion, if the response rate to high-dose IL-2 for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and "good" pathologic predictive features is significantly higher than a historical, unselected patient population.

Secondary

* To determine, in a prospective fashion, the response rate to high-dose IL-2 for patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and "poor" pathologic predictive features and to compare this response rate to the response rate of patients with "good" pathologic predictive features.
* To determine if components of other predictive and prognostic models (e.g MSKCI or UCLA criteria) can help to further define the optimal population to receive high-dose IL2 for metastatic renal cell carcinoma.
* To identify features of the baseline immune function (arginine, arginase, T cell zeta chain) of patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma that are associated with response to high-dose IL-2.
* To identify new proteins or patterns of gene expression that might be associated with high-dose IL-2 responsiveness in order to further narrow the application of IL-2 therapy to those who will benefit the most.

Arms:
arm 1: Participants received high-dose (HD) IL2, 600,000 IU/kg/dose (Prometheus Laboratories Inc.) i.v. every 8 hours for 5 days (maximum of 14 doses) beginning on day 1 and again on day 15. One course generally consisted of 5 days of treatment, 9 days of rest, 5 more days of treatment, and 9 weeks of rest, followed by up to two additional courses of HD IL2 for patients who benefited and tolerated most of the planned IL2 doses. A treatment delay of up to 4 weeks was allowed for resolution of side effects between courses. Patients were eligible to receive a maximum of three courses of treatment.

Interventions: intervention 1: HD IL2
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None

Protocol document: