Phase II clinical trial of capecitabine and gemcitabine chemotherapy in patients with metastatic renal carcinoma

We report a single institution phase II study of gemcitabine 1200 mg m−2 i.v. on days 1 and 8 and capecitabine 1300 mg m−2 twice daily on days 1–14 of each 3-week cycle in patients with metastatic renal carcinoma. Patients had a WHO performance status of 0, 1 or 2. Of the 21 enrolled patients, 19 had received prior immunotherapy or chemoimmunotherapy. All had progressive disease at study entry. In all,19 patients had multiple sites of disease. The median duration of metastatic disease was 12.3 months (range 1.2–78.1 months). Three of the 19 evaluable patients achieved a partial response to treatment, with no complete responses, producing an objective overall response rate of 15.8% (95% CI, 3.4–39.6%). The median time to disease progression was 7.6 months, and median overall survival was 14.2 months. Treatment was reasonably well-tolerated, neutropenia being the most frequently observed grade 3 or 4 toxicity, occurring in 57% of patients. Other side effects were consistent with the established toxicity profile of the two drugs, including diarrhoea, palmar-plantar erythema, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and infection. This combination of gemcitabine and capecitabine has modest activity in immunotherapy-refractory metastatic renal carcinoma with manageable toxicity.