Alternating two older cancer drugs kept advanced kidney cancer at bay for a median of just over two years

Tumours learn to outgrow the drug aimed at them. A Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center team tried outsmarting that lesson in advanced clear-cell kidney cancer: alternating two medicines, pazopanib and bevacizumab, that both starve tumours of new blood vessels, swapped in repeated ten-week cycles so resistance has less time to settle. In the Phase 1/2 study across five academic centres, published in The Lancet Oncology, the typical patient went 24.8 months before the cancer progressed, with median survival of 63.2 months after more than five years of follow-up. The trial had no comparison group, so it cannot prove the schedule beats standard care — but the durability earns it a harder test.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation