OBJECTIVES: Overall survival (OS) results for both nivolumab and cabozantinib in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) are freshly available from separate Phase 3 studies against a common comparator, everolimus. We aimed at comparing these two new treatments by meta-analyzing whole survival curves instead of using a single hazard ratio values. METHODS: Four survival curves were digitized from two pivotal trial publications and meta-analyzed in a Bayesian model to compare OS of nivolumab vs cabozantinib. Previous analyses by the same authors [1] were extended into new families of distributions and ranked according to criteria related to statistical goodness of fit and clinical plausibility. The method enables to circumvent the potential lack of a proportional hazard ratios. RESULTS: Result of traditional meta-analysis gave HR of 0.91 in favour of cabozantinib. Meta-analysis using the best-fitting parametric survival curves favored cabozantinib for the first 9 months but nivolumab after that period. CONCLUSIONS: Meta-analyses of full survival curves using a range of parametric functions offer a better insight into comparative effectiveness of treatments than indirect treatment comparison on HRs only. By extending the existing approach to more families of distributions, more robust and complete estimates were produced. REFERENCE: [1] Wiecek W, Nikodem M, Karcher H. “Comparing emerging drugs in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) without hazard ratios”, poster ID 43273 at ISPOR 18th Congress in Milan. 2015.