Inclusion criteria, exclusion criteria and study summary
Immune checkpoint inhibitors are a type of drug used to treat patients with advanced cancers. They help the body’s immune system find cancer cells. The immune system is important in fighting infections and cancer. Immune checkpoint inhibitors can stop cancers growing for many months or years. Immune checkpoint inhibitors are given to patients through an injection into a vein every 3-6 weeks in a hospital or clinic. Blood tests are needed before each injection. This means that patients spend a lot of time (and money) on hospital visits. The drugs are expensive costing many thousands of pounds per month and use a lot of hospital resource. It is likely that immune checkpoint inhibitors work for a longer period of time than originally thought. This means it may be possible to give the drugs less often and still have the same effect on the cancer. The unwanted side effects of these drugs are unlike those of traditional chemotherapy drugs as they may cause auto-immune problems, meaning that the patients’ immune system attacks their normal tissues. The relationship between dose of drug and side-effect is not clear but it is possible that giving the drugs less often might limit the side-effects experienced by patients. REFINE is a clinical trial that tests whether patients can receive immunotherapy drugs less often whilst getting the same benefit in terms of treating their cancer with fewer side effects and improved quality of life. Giving these drugs less often may also allow the NHS to deliver equally effective treatment at a lower cost. The REFINE trial is an initial test of this concept and aims to understand the benefits to patients and to the health service from this approach, and may lead to a larger trial in due course. REFINE will start by testing this in groups of patients with advanced kidney cancer and melanoma but will then test this approach in patients with a range of other tumour types.