A study of nearly 1,500 patients treated for kidney cancer at the University of California-Los Angeles in the last 15 years indicates that patients may benefit from an individualized treatment approach.

According to Lead researcher Dr. Arie S. Belldegrun from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, “All localized kidney cancers patients are not same & not all metastatic kidney cancer patients are also same.”
 
The study has been published in the Nov. 1, 2008 issue of Cancer, the peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society.

The researchers found that Patients with localized cancer may have low, intermediate or high risk cancer.All this based on the chance for recurrence. In case of high risk cancer some add-on-therapies are required.

Belldegrun said “This research identifies, very precisely, which patients should get which therapies." For example, a low-risk patient with localized disease could be treated with surgery alone. On the other hand, a low-risk patient with metastatic cancer should get very aggressive treatment.

A patient with localized cancer if identified as low risk, his 5-year survival rate is expected to be 97 %, while his 10-year survival rate is 92 % or if identified as intermediate risk, his 5-year survival rate of 81 % and a 10-year survival rate of 61 % & if identified as high risk, his 5-year survival rate of 62 %, with a 10-year survival of 41 %.

Patients with high-risk, metastatic disease should be benefit from treatment and may want to forego surgery and toxic therapies.

Researchers’ findings can be used as a benchmark with which to compare three recently FDA-approved targeted therapies for kidney cancer -- Sorafenib, Sunitinib, and Temsirolimus.