Big News!
We are thrilled to announce that our white paper of the 2019 Kidney Cancer Research Summit (KCRS) was just published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. You can see the paper here.
The paper highlights the ground-breaking translational research performed by Department of Defense-funded researchers as part of the Congressionally-Directed Medical Research Programs, specifically the Kidney Cancer Research Program.
What This Means
This white paper summarizes amazing work from translational researchers all over the country that are moving the field of kidney cancer research forward.
Epigenetics, novel drugs, immune microenvironment, rare kidney cancer variants, and other topics were covered at this event.
While KCRS19 stimulated discussion on important kidney cancer research challenges, there is a lot more we need to work on as a field as we look forward to KCRS20 this fall — whether our planned event unfolds in person or virtually.
For example, KCRS19 addressed a range of important topics — novel molecular targets for the treatment of RCC, improving drug delivery methods to improve cell specificity, state-of-the-art sequencing methods, finding novel immune checkpoints (beyond PD-(L)1 and CTLA-4), improving the characterization of molecular drivers of variant histiology, and improving collaborations between clinicians and scientists.
Looking forward to KCRS20, we still have to address a number of unmet needs: developing representative cell line models of different renal cell histologies, leveraging novel methods to target transcriptional factors in RCC, better recognizing and tailoring the management of hereditary cancer conditions associated with RCC, novel therapeutic options for variant histology RCC subtypes, and better defining the clonal evolutional history of renal cell carcinoma tumors.
Why This Matters
Until the KidneyCAN team produced KCRS in 2019, there had not been a conference focused on translational studies in the broad and heterogeneous group of kidney cancers. A group of researchers, clinicians, and patient advocates dedicated to renal cell carcinoma (RCC) launched KCRS to spur collaboration and further therapeutic advances in these tumors.
The white paper published by JNCI provides a summary of KCRS. For the laypeople among us, it is heavy on science and perhaps difficult to understand. However, we feel confident that you will share our satisfaction and hope at seeing the growth and cohesion of a talented community focused on kidney cancer.
KidneyCAN extends our sincerest thanks to the many fine researchers who support and contribute to the understanding, the treatment and the progress toward a cure. We extend our special thanks to our Co-Chairs Dr. Toni Choueiri and Dr. Hans Hammers, who give so much time to support this vision to bring researchers together to collaborate on a cure.
