Cancers, Vol. 11, Pages 422: Renal Cell Carcinoma with Sarcomatoid Features: Finally New Therapeutic Hope?

Cancers, Vol. 11, Pages 422: Renal Cell Carcinoma with Sarcomatoid Features: Finally New Therapeutic Hope? Cancers doi: 10.3390/cancers11030422 Authors: Renate Pichler Eva Compérat Tobias Klatte Martin Pichler Wolfgang Loidl Lukas Lusuardi Manuela Schmidinger Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) with sarcomatoid differentiation belongs to the most aggressive clinicopathologic phenotypes of RCC. It is characterized by a high propensity for primary metastasis and limited therapeutic options due to its relative resistance to established systemic targeted therapy. Most trials report on a poor median overall survival of 5 to 12 months. Sarcomatoid RCC can show the typical features of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and may contain epithelial and mesenchymal features on both the morphological and immunhistochemical level. On the molecular level, next-generation sequencing confirmed differences in driver mutations between sarcomatoid RCC and non-sarcomatoid RCC. In contrast, mutational profiles within the epithelial and sarcomatoid components of sarcomatoid RCC were shown to be identical, with TP53 being the most frequently altered gene. These data suggest that both epithelial and sarcomatoid components of RCC originate from the same progenitor cell, segregating primarily according to the underlying histologic epithelial subtype of RCC (clear cell, papillary or chromophobe). Current studies have shown that sarcomatoid RCC express programmed death 1 (PD-1) and its ...
Source: Cancers - Category: Cancer & Oncology Authors: Tags: Commentary Source Type: research