Potential of new therapies like anti-PD1 in kidney cancer.

OPINION STATEMENT: Various targeted immunotherapies have shown efficacy in metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC) recently. Specifically, molecules targeting the PD-1/PD-L1 pathway have shown promising results. These agents appear to provide several advantages over previous standard therapies. First, higher objective responses are attained with these agents, many of which are complete and durable. Second, these drugs are associated with less overall treatment-related toxicity. This allows for the testing of various combination therapies that may provide better clinical outcomes. Finally, these novel therapeutics are unique in that they appear to have benefit in a variety of neoplasms, including those with dismal prognosis such as metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Further investigations are needed to confirm these findings and explore additional applications. The importance of PD-L1 expression on tumor cells on the efficacy of PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors is also under investigation. Patient selection based on this expression may optimize the observed clinical benefit. Thus, we believe that new therapeutics such as Anti-PD1 and Anti-PD-L1 antibodies will make a significant impact on cancer treatment in general as well as in the field of kidney cancer.