What are the best drug combinations to combat kidney cancer?

Prof. Grant Stewart, from the University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK, discusses the challenge of deciding the best drug combinations treat kidney cancer, at the European Association of Urology (EAU) conference 2017 in London, UK. Currently in Kidney cancer, we have drugs will reduce the size of the cancer and keep it at bay for a period of time. There are also novel drugs that affect the overall immune system. Inevitably, all kidney cancers will eventually develop resistance to these medications, and we need to think of new strategies to better treat the disease. At the EAU meeting 2017, Prof. Stewart mentions some exciting new combination treatments that are being discussed, enhancing the effects of current medications to make the cancer more responsive, with the potential to permanently keep the tumour at bay. There is also a concentration on how best to decide exactly which combinations would be best to follow-up on, as we are not quite sure which ones are likely to show long term benefits. In the session, he mentions discussing some really exciting experimental models that we can use to better predict which drug combinations will work and to then implement into clinical trials.