The Latest Breakthroughs That Could Improve Kidney Cancer Treatment

Dr. David McDermott started treating people with kidney cancer in the 1990s. Back then, he says the prognosis for most of his patients with advanced disease was dispiritingly grim. “We had very few treatment options, and the survival for patients was a year or less,” he recalls. “Radiation and chemotherapy were tried, but they didn’t work.” Things began to change when researchers discovered that kidney cancers were highly “angiogenic” compared to most other forms of cancer, meaning that kidney tumors are rich in blood vessels. This insight supported the development of angiogenesis inhibitors, a type of drug that cuts off the blood supply to these tumors. “These drugs were very effective because of the biology that drives most kidney cancers,” says McDermott, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a cancer specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. Life expectancies doubled—a great leap forward, but one that still left plenty of room for additional improvement. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] A more significant breakthrough—one that some cancer researchers say has revolutionized the treatment of kidney cancer—arrived just a decade ago. “The big innovation that changed things was immune checkpoint inhibitors,” McDermott says. Many cancers, including kidney cancers, have built-in defenses that allow them to repel the human immune system’s attac...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Cancer healthscienceclimate Source Type: news