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The KCA’s International Kidney Cancer Symposium took place on November 15-16 in Miami, Florida. Here are a few of the highlights from the program. Think Tank: Coalition for a Cure The KCA convened it’s very first think tank prior to IKCS on November 14. Twenty-five of the top minds in kidney cancer from around the world covering five different specialties – medical…

In honor of National Family Caregivers Month, the KCA is sharing some insights from our archives that still apply today. These tips are excerpted from the KCA’s 2012 publication We Have Kidney Cancer: Survivors Stories. Joyce’s family was impacted by a hereditary disorder called von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease, one of the genetic factors that is linked to an increased risk of…

Dr. W. Kimryn Rathmell received the Eugene P. Schonfeld Award last week at the Kidney Cancer Association’s 18th International Kidney Cancer Symposium (IKCS) in Miami, Florida. Rathmell, a professor and director of the Division of Hematology and Oncology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC), was the first woman to receive the honor, which is granted by the IKCS Scientific Program Committee to recognize respected health…

A total of $1.3 million awarded to advance new treatments for kidney cancer HOUSTON – September 16, 2019 – The Kidney Cancer Association (KCA) is pleased to announce the recipients of the Advanced Discovery Awards (ADA) and Young Investigator Awards (YIA). In April, the KCA approved $1.3 million in new grant funding to advance early detection and new treatments for…

Updated results of an early-phase trial showing positive outcomes for melanoma patients treated with an investigational anti-cancer drug plus the checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab could be promising for kidney cancer patients too. People diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are at increased risk for developing melanoma, and vice versa. The cancers share some genetic characteristics and respond to many of the…

When students in Kenosha, Wisconsin wanted to celebrate a beloved local football coach, they did it in a blaze of color, turning the stands orange during a Friday night game. Frank Matrise Jr. died of kidney cancer on July 11, 2019, age 53. He coached football at St. Joseph Catholic Academy and later at Tremper High School for a combined…

A research duo from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas – Dr. Eric Jonasch, an oncologist and professor in the department of Genitourinary Medical Oncolgy, and Dr. Guang Peng, an associate professor of Clinical Cancer Prevention – received a 2019 Advanced Discovery Award. The team plans to investigate how the novel tumor suppressor gene NPRL2 functions…

Research on altered von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) genes proved to be critical in revealing the mechanism by which cells sense and adapt to changing levels of oxygen – a fundamental cellular process that is particularly important in some kidney cancers. Dr. William Kaelin at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, Dr. Gregg Semenza at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland,…

Dr. Ed Reznik is a computational oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and a recipient of a 2019 Young Investigator Award to examine tumor metabolism as it relates to the tumor microenvironment (TME) of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Dr. Reznik, under the mentorship of Dr. Ari Hakimi, a surgeon at MSKCC, proposed that a better understanding of the…

Dr. Tian Zhang is a medical oncologist at the Duke Cancer Institute. She received a 2019 Young Investigator Award for research that could help doctors and patients make better decisions when selecting first-line therapies for metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Dr. Zhang will analyze how the tumor microenvironment (TME) responds to immunotherapy and investigate a panel of five genes and…