Blog

Virginia Seery, RN, MSN, is a member of the KCA’s Clinical Advisory Board and sees patients at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. We spoke to Virginia about her work in the KCA and in medicine.  How long have you been working with the KCA and what motivated you to get involved? I have been involved with the KCA…

Last week, fans of the Buffalo Bills football team came together to honor former practice squad member Titus Davis, who died on November 11. Davis was 27 and had a rare, aggressive form of kidney cancer called renal medullary carcinoma (RMC). https://twitter.com/sanealexjones/status/1327118763829981187 Twitter user @sanealexjones called for the team's fans - the "Bills Mafia" - to donate to the Kidney…

Jan Jackson, RN is a member of the KCA’s Clinical Advisory Board and currently works at MD Anderson Cancer Center.  We spoke to Jan about her work in the KCA and in medicine.  How long have you been working with the KCA and what motivated you to get involved? I joined the KCA nursing board (now the Clinical Advisory Board)…

John Fudala and Barbara Gerzonich came together over food and science. John Fudala's Health Department ID photo, taken before his illness took hold. Photo courtesy of Barbara Gerzonich. They both worked in public health – on the same floor of the same food safety office in New York state. John specialized in tracking foodborne outbreaks while Barbara focused on food…

Craig Dowdy was diagnosed with atrial fibrillation at age 62. That meant regular checks for blood clots. During one such check, a tumor was found on Craig’s left kidney.  Having never had any kidney cancer symptoms, Craig underwent surgery to remove the left kidney and tumor removed in 2012. The tissue surrounding his tumor appeared to be cancer free but…

Megan Conley was diagnosed with chromophobe renal cell carcinoma in February 2020 and underwent surgery in March during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic uncertainty. She shared her experience and her major learnings and takeaways in a three-part series. From driving non-stop from Florida to Washington DC for treatment, to watching her husband wave at her hospital window from the street,…

“I had been thinking of writing a voting song when one night I woke up with a tune in my head. I went to the piano and wrote it down. The words started to come to me, and after a couple of days, I had those also." As a professional jazz pianist, William "Billy" Foster’s passion for music gave him…

Dr. Brandon Manley is a urologic oncologist at the Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida. He received a 2020 Young Investigator Award for an “Investigation of the Aberrant Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Splicing Proteome to Determine Drug Repurposing Strategies for ccRCC”, which examines how EGFR, an effective drug target in various cancers, could be useful in kidney cancer.We spoke with…

Dr. Chiara Di Malta is a postdoctoral fellow at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine in Pozzuoli, Italy. She received a 2020 Young Investigator Award for her project, called “Exploiting the potential of MiT/TFE factors inhibition to treat inherited kidney cancers”, which focuses on two types of genetic renal cell carcinomas.   We spoke to Dr. Di Malta about…

Dr. Ritesh Kotecha is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He received a 2020 Young Investigator Award for his project “HLA Evolutionary Diversity - A Population Specific Biomarker for Kidney Cancer Immunotherapy”, which will examine inherited cell membrane proteins as potential biomarkers for personalized kidney cancer immunotherapy. We spoke to Dr. Kotecha about his…