Renal Cell Carcinoma vs Renal Medullary Carcinoma Explained
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Kimryn Ratthmell
In this program:
Renal medullary carcinoma and renal cell carcinoma possess some key differences. Watch as expert Dr. Kimryn Rathmell from Vanderbilt University Medical Center explains how the carcinomas differ in patient populations, incidence rate, genetic mutations, and where they occur in the kidneys.
Transcript
Dr. Kimryn Rathmell:
Renal medullary carcinoma and renal cell carcinoma are quite different. Renal cell carcinoma is a general term that we use for all of the cancers that come from the cortex of the meat of the kidney, renal medullary carcinoma is one of them. It's distinct enough that it really sits in its own house genetically, physiologically. So if you take all cancers that come in the kidney, that's probably in the United States, 60-, 65,000 new cases will be diagnosed, way less than 1 percent of those will be real medullary carcinoma. It's genetically very distinct, and where most kidney cancers or renal cell carcinomas come from the cortex, so a kidney is shaped like a kidney bean. And the outer portion is called the cortex, the middle is called the medulla, and so renal medullary carcinoma, no surprise comes from the medulla, so it actually comes from a separate part of the kidney. It's different in several really important ways, First is the kind of patient who get this cancer, most renal cell carcinoma is traditionally in the 50s and 60s of age, a little bit more men than women and in renal medullary carcinoma, that age range is 10 to 30, it's really a disease of young adulthood.
I think the key difference is that it has this unique link to hemoglobin apathies or defects in hemoglobin, like sickle cell trait or sickle cell disease, and so it's very disproportionately in the African American population. It always occurs with a defective hemoglobin gene. So very interesting, different genetics, and then the other genes that are driving this cancer are entirely distinct from what causes the other renal cell carcinomas. So I'm a kidney cancer doctor, that means I'm interested in all of them. We do research in all of those different areas, but renal medullary carcinoma is special, because it's really a distinct population and with different genetics.
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