Opdivo + Yervoy for metastatic cancer

[JSEIB]

My husband started immunotherapy treatment for metastatic cancer on October 15th, which spread from kidney cancer.  It is renal cell carcinoma and he has several small tumors in each lung and one affecting a lymph node by his adrenal gland...which is near where his affected kidney was before it was removed.  

He didn't get to start treatment right away, because doctors wanted his kidney out first and he needed to heal before starting the immunotherapy.  My husband had his first CT scan on December 13th, but it showed about 30% growth of all of the tumors.  They told him it could be because the tumors grew that much or more between his diagnosis in late August until his treatment began, which was 6 1/2 weeks later.

His oncologist said that many patients don't see their tumors shrink until four months after treatment starts.

We would just like to know if anyone has been on immunotherapy (possibly both Yervoy & Opdivo) and had to wait four months to see their tumors start to shrink.

 

 

 

 

[LexieCat]

Hi there, and welcome.

If your husband's lung tumor has spread from his kidney cancer, then the lung tumors are still considered kidney cancer, not lung cancer.  The different cancers have different treatment protocols and different responses to various drug therapies.  

All this is by way of saying that I'm not sure the experience of lung cancer patients who are on an immunotherapy regimen would translate to someone on the same or similar drugs for metastatic kidney cancer.  You might get more helpful information at a forum for kidney cancer patients/survivors.

[Steff]

Hi there,

I'm not sure about kidney cancer, but it's pretty common to see some "growth" in tumors before shrinkage on immunotherapy.  The "growth" can be from a variety of things - actual growth, inflammation, healthy cells bunched up on the tumor to attack it.  That being said, I don't know if this correlates to kidney cancer.