Introduction: The systemic therapy in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) is moving from tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors to immune checkpoint inhibitors and its combination with TKIs.Areas covered: This review provides a general overview using immune checkpoint inhibition for the treatment of RCC. Clinical results from conducted and ongoing clinical trials are summarized and checkpoint inhibition is reviewed in the context to other available systemic therapies such as TKIs for mRCC based on the different International Metastastic RCC Database Consortium (IMCD) risk groups. Furthermore, prospects for the use of predictive biomarkers in the decision-making process of chosen therapy will be given.Expert opinion: Using checkpoint inhibition in mRCC has demonstrated a superior efficacy for patients with IMDC intermediate and poor risk for ipilimumab combined with nivolumab. Furthermore, therapeutic regimes with tyrosine kinase inhibition plus immune checkpoint-inhibition were recently presented and demonstrated superiority in all risk groups for axitinib plus pembrolizumab in overall survival and progression-free survival (PFS) and axitinib plus avelumab in PFS compared to sunitinib monotherapy. Novel biomarkers of response to further optimize therapeutic selection and patient outcomes are ongoing medical objectives.
Keywords: Biomarker; CTLA-4; PD-1; PD-L1; checkpoint inhibition; renal cell carcinoma.