Adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma

Recent advances in the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma expose a gap in the treatment of less advanced, localized disease. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors, which revolutionized the treatment of metastatic disease, have not provided a similar survival benefit in the adjuvant setting and currently only sunitinib is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for adjuvant treatment in patients with high-risk of recurrence based on S-TRAC disease-free survival data. The advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors has offered a fresh hope in the field of adjuvant treatment after encouraging results are seen with combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors as well as with targeted therapy in the metastatic setting. Several studies are investigating these combinations in the adjuvant setting, and it is hoped that they will bring about a better outcome for a largely unmet need in kidney cancer treatment.