Research

Supporting scientific and medical research is a core pillar of the KCA's mission. We're proud to share our top 10 initiatives from 2025 that are driving discovery, building partnerships, and translating science into patient engagement to shape the future of kidney cancer research. Scientific Advancements Driving discovery and shaping the future of kidney cancer research. 1. New Treatment Strategy for…

This is a guest post by Catherine Yutmeyer, a patient advocate diagnosed with stage 4 chromophobe renal cell carcinoma. Catherine attended the Kidney Cancer Association's 2025 International Kidney Cancer Symposium (IKCS): North America, held in Denver, Colorado on November 13-15. She shared her insights, takeaways, and overall experience at the meeting. Five years ago, I was diagnosed with stage IV…

Dr. Ken Batai received a 2025 KCA Interdisciplinary Medicine Focus Award in partnership with the Michael and Ina Korek Foundation for research on the "Investigation of the relationship between weight history and abdominal adiposity and their influence on survival". Dr. Batai is a researcher at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. We spoke about his research and the impact it can…

Dr. Ritesh Kotecha is a medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. He received a 2025 Pediatric Kidney Cancer Focus Award in partnership with Joey's Wings Foundation for his project "GPNMB-CAR T Cell Therapy for Translocation Renal Cell Carcinoma". He also received a KCA Research Award in 2020. We spoke with Dr. Kotecha about his work and what it…

Dr. Katherine Alexander is a researcher, Assistant Professor, and Cancer Center Member at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a biomedical research and education institution in New York. Dr. Alexander received a 2025 KCA Research Award for a project on "Nuclear Speckles as Prognostic and Predictive Indicators in ccRCC". We spoke with Dr. Alexander about her work and what it might mean…

Dr. Niki Zacharias Millward received a 2025 KCA Trailblazer Award for research on "Interrogating the Role of TRIP13 in Sarcomatoid Chromophobe Renal Cell Carcinoma". Dr. Millward previously received a KCA Research Award in 2023. Dr. Millward is an assistant professor in the Department of Urology – Research, Division of Surgery at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. We spoke…

Dr. Miguel Zugman received a 2025 KCA Trailblazer Award in partnership with Kure It Cancer Research for research on "Stool microbiome assessment in a randomized phase I trial of nivolumab and ipilimumab with or without EXL01 in the first-line treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC)". Dr. Zugman is a postdoctoral research fellow at City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center…

The Kidney Cancer Association (KCA) awarded over half a million dollars in research grants to six investigators pursuing high-impact kidney cancer research through the annual KCA Research Award Program and partnerships. Each award supports early- to mid-career investigators researching topics that require greater attention and understanding across the kidney cancer community. The KCA distributed a total of $525,000 in research…

The Kidney Cancer Association (KCA) and the American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) partnered for a special joint session during the annual ASTRO meeting on September 30 in San Francisco, California. The session brought together an international, multidisciplinary panel of experts to discuss the emerging role of stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), a highly focused form of radiation therapy, to the…

We rounded up a few research highlights from the 2025 Congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), held recently in Berlin, Germany. Is a triplet of drugs a superior first-line treatment strategy? Among four different combinations of first-line triplet therapy for advanced kidney cancer, all including pembrolizumab, one showed promising efficacy compared with the reference study arm in which patients…