SLK-Kliniken Heilbronn GmbH

This is a monocenter, single-arm, prospective phase Ib trial, designed to evaluate the safety, clinical toxicity and in vivo immunological effects of a patient-individualized peptide vaccination added to standard of care checkpoint blockade (nivolumab) in adult patients with metastatic/advanced renal cell carcinoma who experienced at least stable disease after four cycles of standard of care immune therapy (ipilimumab/nivolumab).

In December 2019 in the city of Wuhan in China, a series of patients with unclear pneumonia was noticed, some of whom have died of it. In virological analyses of samples from the patients' deep respiratory tract, a novel coronavirus was isolated (SARS-CoV-2). The disease spread rapidly in the city of Wuhan at the beginning of 2020 and soon beyond in China and, in the coming weeks, around the world.
Initial studies described numerous severe courses, particularly those associated with increased patient age and previous cardiovascular, metabolic and respiratory diseases. A small number of the particularly severely ill patients required not only highly invasive ventilation therapy but also extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (vv-ECMO) to supply the patient's blood with sufficient oxygen.
Even under maximum intensive care treatment, a very high mortality rate of approximately 80-100% was observed in this patient group. In addition, high levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6) could be detected in the blood of these severely ill patients, which in turn were associated with poor outcome.
From experience in the therapy of severely ill patients with severe infections and respiratory failure, we know that treatment with a CytoSorb® adsorber can lead to a reduction of the circulating pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and thus improve the course of the disease and the outcome of the patients.
The aim of the study is to investigate the influence of extracorporeal cytokine adsorption on interleukin-6-levels and time to successful ECMO explantation under controlled conditions in patients with particularly severe COVID-19 disease requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation.