Dr. Lee on Immunotherapy's Future in RCC

Chung-Han (Joe) Lee, MD, medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses the future of immunotherapy in the treatment landscape of renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

As of right now, Lee explains, researchers believe that immunotherapies are the way forward. The way to combine these immunotherapies in novel regimens, he adds, may be very important. These include potential combinations with immunotherapy plus VEGF-targeted therapy. Or, there may be a development of new pathways that might be significant, now that researchers better understand the genetics of kidney cancer.

Additionally, it is significant for patients to participate in a clinical trial, Lee says. This is because it allows patients to have access to medications that otherwise wouldn’t be available to them. Especially for first-line trials, there is often a lot of misinformation on whether it is a phase I, phase II, or phase III trial. Researchers hope that these experimental therapies will be better than currently available treatments.