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By Dr. Daniel GeorgeChair, KCA Medical Steering CommitteeMedical Oncologist, Duke University There is much more to managing kidney cancer than what guidelines say or what clinical trials can test. That’s why we’ve launched a new blog series. Clinical Perspectives will feature current practice trends from nationally recognized experts who treat people with kidney cancer every day. I’m excited to share…

As Steve Ruisi was rolled into surgery earlier this year for a radical nephrectomy, Frank Sinatra’s "My Way", coming through the speakers, seemed an ironic choice for an operating room. And now the end is here And so I face that final curtain... I did it, I did it my way. But when Ruisi’s surgeon came to check on him…

The following is an excerpt from a blog post by Laura Esfeller, a marketing professional living in California with kidney cancer. Laura writes at singlewhitekidney. Dr. Nicholas J. Vogelzang I received a letter today that I knew was coming, but I’m not going to lie – it still hurts reading it. My beloved oncologist – Dr. Nicholas Vogelzang* – has…

This is a guest post by Nathaniel Stout, who has a stage 4 collecting duct carcinoma diagnosis. He is based in New Hampshire. I was diagnosed with advanced, stage 4 collecting duct carcinoma (CDC), a rare and aggressive kidney cancer with a poor prognosis, in 2021 following two biopsies roughly two months after my cancer was first discovered. At that…

This is a guest post by Kenneth G. Winters, a retired US Navy Chaplain from Massachusetts. Read his other post, "Life is meant to be lived, not just survived", here. https://www.kidneycancer.org/stories/life-is-meant-to-be-lived/ One of my concerns about the first article I wrote for the Kidney Cancer Association was that it may have seemed overwhelmingly positive. Entitled “Life is meant to be…

By D’Ann George, PhD, Medical Writer Dr. Eric Jonasch Positive Phase 1 Data on a “new class of drug” for ccRCC There has not been a new class of drugs for people with metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) since checkpoint inhibitors first entered clinical trials nearly a decade ago. At his poster presentation during the 2022 American Society of Clinical…

By D’Ann George, PhD, Medical Writer Racial and ethnic diversity in clinical trials, and the lack of it, was a major theme across research presented at the 2022 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, held in Chicago, Illinois on June 3-7. Trial participation is generally low among adults with cancer even though trials are an important way to…

Below are some highlights of the research presented at the 2022 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which took place in Chicago, Illinois on June 3-7. Much of the kidney cancer data presented during the 2022 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) expanded upon previous work and clarified how to continue refining clinical trial design…

Dr. Laura Bukavina Dr. Laura Bukavina traveled to Poland earlier this year to provide medical assistance to people escaping the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began February 24, 2022. Bukavina is Ukrainian and migrated to the US at age 10. She is currently a urologic oncology fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bukavina spoke about her month-long…

Zita Lim, PA-C, is a board-certified physician assistant at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, TX, specializing in treating metastatic kidney cancer and a member of the KCA’s Clinical Advisory Board. KCA Ambassador Annamarya Scaccia, who was diagnosed with chromophobe renal cell carcinoma in 2020, spoke with Lim about navigating survivorship—from what being a survivor means to taking care…