Open AccessAdvanced kidney carcinoma: decision paths and therapeutic perspectives
Author(s) -
Valentina Da Prat,
Isabella Testa,
Giuseppe Procopio
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
clinical management issues
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2283-3137
pISSN - 1973-4832
DOI - 10.7175/cmi.v8i3.916
Subject(s) - medicine , kidney cancer , renal cell carcinoma , kidney , vascular endothelial growth factor , cancer , pi3k/akt/mtor pathway , discovery and development of mtor inhibitors , intensive care medicine , targeted therapy , vegf receptors , cancer research , oncology , signal transduction , biochemistry , chemistry
Treatment of kidney cancer represents an open challenge for scientists and clinicians. In fact,renal tumours are resistant to virtually all of the currently available chemotherapeutics, beingonly partially sensitive to immunological agents. During the last decade, knowledge of geneticbasis of cancer has grown considerably. This has lead to an authentic revolution in the clinicalmanagement of renal tumours: the introduction of targeted therapies. Novel agents addressangiogenic signalling pathways through inhibition of the vascular endothelial growth factor(VEGF) or the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR). However, there is still no greatevidence favouring one drug over the others. This underlines the need for decision-making toolsin renal cell cancer treatment, in order to rationalise the choice of appropriate targeted agentsand to enable individualised clinical management. This is a brief overview on the state of theart of the treatment of metastatic renal tumour.