Kidney Cancer Research Program May Play Pivotal Role in Advancing Care

In a collaboration with KidneyCAN, CancerNetwork® spoke with Elizabeth P. Henske, MD, and Jason Muhitch, PhD, about the Kidney Cancer Research Program, and how funding through this initiative has yielded progress in the kidney cancer field.

Henske is the director of the Center for LAM Research and Clinical Care and a physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, as well as a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. Muhitch is an associate professor of oncology, cochair of the Genitourinary Translational Research Group, deputy director of Graduate Studies, and a member of the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Muhitch described the history of the Kidney Cancer Research Program since its inception in 2017, noting how an “avalanche” of dedicated funds from this program has propelled research efforts in the field. Henske highlighted how the program has been “pivotal” in aiding breakthroughs in the care of patients with kidney cancer.

KidneyCAN is a nonprofit organization with a mission to accelerate cures for kidney cancer through education, advocacy, and research funding. Learn more about KidneyCAN’s mission and work here.

Transcript:

Muhitch: It’s been about 5 years since I [first] connected with the Kidney Cancer Research Program. It goes all the way for me. It’s a little personal, too. During the [COVID-19] pandemic, this was my first major peer-reviewed funding award, and I received that in the middle of the pandemic in our basement. I’m also thinking back to some of the stories that I learned about how this all came to be, and it was a little bit earlier than that. My understanding is that there was a small group of advocates, and they partnered with physicians and researchers to have more of these discussion with congressional offices about establishing dedicated funds for kidney cancer research. That began back in 2017. Prior to that, there was funding through these umbrella programs for kidney cancer research. But it really took a huge leap forward at that time.

In 2017, dedicated funding for kidney cancer was [approximately] $10 million. It doubled soon afterwards, and now, I believe the most current Kidney Cancer Research Program [fund] was $50 million. An avalanche of funding has propelled the community forward.

Henske: The Kidney Cancer Research Program is pivotal to the place we are right now in terms of the care of individuals who have kidney cancer and to the future of kidney cancer research and breakthroughs in clinical care. I just can’t overstate how important it is. The Kidney Cancer Research Program has helped us make several critical breakthroughs in the care of individuals who have the most common type of kidney cancer, and we’re now able to start thinking about the other types of kidney cancer, some of which affect children and young adults. We’ve made a lot of progress already thanks to the Kidney Cancer Research Program, and we have so much more that we urgently want and need to do for individuals who have tumors of the kidney.

Reference

Kidney cancer. Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs. Accessed December 6, 2024. https://tinyurl.com/mwpxysx4

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