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Every year, the Kidney Cancer Association hosts our signature Challenge event in cities across the US. The Challenge reflects the number of people estimated to be diagnosed with kidney cancer in a given year. In 2024, nearly 82,000 people will be diagnosed with kidney cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. These staggering statistics inspire the KCA, patients, and the community…

This is a guest post by Dr. Arpita Desai, an oncologist at the University of California San Francisco specializing in genitourinary cancers. She summarized the results and takeaways for patients from key trials presented at the recent American Society of Clinical Oncology Genitourinary Cancers Symposium (ASCO GU).  Survival benefit seen for adjuvant pembrolizumab  Over the past five decades, researchers have…

This is a guest post by Mallory Foxx, kidney cancer survivor and the 2023 Mrs. Black International Ambassador. Mallory Foxx at her nephrectomy. On April 15, 2023, I heard the words that would change my life: “Mallory, you have cancer.” I was shocked. Me? Cancer? What? I was in disbelief to say the least. I was scared, I felt a…

This is a guest post by Nicole Yvette Miles, kidney cancer survivor. My name is Nicole Miles from Waldorf, Maryland and on September 22, 2023 around 11 pm after a typically normal Friday, I started experiencing a pain in my stomach which from there I started experiencing a pain on my right side and this is the night my life…

This is a guest post by D'Ann George, PhD, Medical Writer. Joel Stern vividly remembers the first time he saw the phrase palliative care in his medical file. At the time, in 2020, Stern had just been diagnosed with stage IV renal-cell carcinoma. “I thought it was the equivalent of hospice, which I knew wasn’t something I wanted to see…

The Kidney Cancer Association (KCA) will partner with xCures, the AI-driven medical record aggregator and research company, to bring advanced opportunities for clinical trial participation and treatment to kidney cancer patients. The partnership builds on xCures’ expertise in real-world oncology data to accelerate research advances in kidney cancer. Researchers collaborating with the KCA may access xCures’ database of deidentified, real-time,…

This is a guest post by Carrie Mann, 48, a stage 4 kidney cancer patient from West Virginia. Carrie Mann with her husband Derek, younger daughter Myla, older daughter Callie, and Callie's husband Dakota, at Callie's wedding in October 2024. My name is Carrie Mann. I am a 48-year-old mother of two from southern West Virginia, a county with not…

This is a guest post by Jeff Kallis, who was diagnosed with stage 3 clear cell renal cell carcinoma in 2023. Jeff has since written a book about his experience, One Kidney: Dealing with Kidney Cancer. Jeff lives in Rochester, Minnesota. (Header photo: Cindy and Jeff Kallis. Wedding photography by Joshua Becker.) Jeff Kallis wrote One Kidney: Dealing with Kidney…

This is a guest post by Dr. Pavlos Msaouel, a medical oncologist and researcher at MD Anderson Cancer Center, renal medullary carcinoma expert, and member of the KCA’s Medical Steering Committee. Dr. Msaouel has also received multiple KCA grants to further research in kidney cancer. Six papers published in 2023 improved our understanding of renal medullary carcinoma (RMC), a rare…

Dr. Salvatore La Rosa, KCA Chief Scientific Officer I’m excited to highlight a new study spearheaded by Dr. Ritesh Kotecha from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that describes how renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients’ genetic ancestry (GA) – which is the information about people who are biologically related – is correlated with clinical, histological, and molecular data across different ancestral…