What Treatment Options Are There for Renal Medullary Carcinoma?
More Programs and Publications Featuring Dr. Kimryn Ratthmell
In this program:
Renal medullary carcinoma treatment options have been expanding. Watch as expert Dr. Kimryn Rathmell from Vanderbilt University Medical Center shares information about current treatment options and exciting research efforts that are under study for RMC care.
Transcript
Dr. Kimryn Rathmell:
So our experience with renal medullary carcinoma today suggests that the most effective treatment is chemotherapy, we use usually combination chemotherapy with pretty powerful drugs, we know that we can pretty reliably reduce the cancer, and in some cases, that can be enough to make that cancer be amenable to surgical section, I think that's our best outcome. So the chemotherapy itself doesn't cure people...and that's something that we're really trying to work towards. I think the rest of therapy is still in largely investigational stages, we're learning a lot more about the biology of the cancer, that suggests that there's ways that the DNA in those cancer cells is reprogrammed, and we're working both with academic government and industry to find ways to reprogram things back. There are investigations around the country that are testing those, there is a new biologic combination that recently is showing some really exciting promise and has been published and so is available as well. So I would say most people get a combination chemotherapy and then now are getting some of these biologics, the new immunotherapies that are all the hype in most cancers...we're really still trying to understand...
I had published...one of my early experiences was a patient of mine with renal medullary carcinoma who responded beautifully to immunotherapy, but in follow-up studies where people have done much more extensive work...that seems to be more rare. So immunotherapies are a little bit less commonly used, they often get tried, and if they work, that's fantastic, but it's not the mainstream yet for this cancer. So progress...I would say that the progress in the last five years though, has gone from no road map at all to very clearly what our menu of of chemotherapies is to work with, and most recently, and this is just published in the last couple of months, this biological combination, that looks like it has activity as well.
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