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Sawhney et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2021;7:48 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2021.64
Metastasis and Treatment

Review Open Access

Adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma

1
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Paramvir Sawhney , Suyanto Suyanto , Agnieszka Michael , Hardev Pandha 2
1
Department of Oncology, University College London Cancer Institute, London WC1E 6DD, UK.
2
St Luke’s Cancer Centre, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford GU2 7XX, UK.
Correspondence to: Dr. Hardev Pandha, St Luke’s Cancer Centre, Royal Surrey County Hospital, Egerton Road, Guildford GU2
7XX, UK. E-mail: h.pandha@surrey.ac.uk
How to cite this article: Sawhney P, Suyanto S, Michael A, Pandha H. Adjuvant therapy for renal cell carcinoma. J Cancer
Metastasis Treat 2021;7:48. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2021.64

Received: 15 Mar 2021 First Decision: 25 May 2021 Revised: 16 Jun 2021 Accepted: 29 Jun 2021 First online: 4 Jul 2021

Academic Editors: Lucio Miele, Hendrik Van Poppel Copy Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang Production Editor: Yue-Yue Zhang

Abstract
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.

Keywords: Localized renal cell carcinoma, adjuvant, immunotherapy, tyrosine kinase inhibitors, prognosis, clinical
trials, predictive model, risk stratification

INTRODUCTION
Localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC) even if treated radically, with surgery, has a high recurrence rate of
30% to metastatic disease, which carries a poor prognosis. There is an unmet need for adjuvant systemic
therapies which can effectively delay recurrence, or increase the cure rate, and, unsurprisingly, this is a
highly active area of clinical trial work. Unfortunately, the silver-bullet has not yet arrived, with vascular

© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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