Fewer than 10 percent of people with kidney cancer survive for more than five years. The NIH study was small, but the results were so dramatic we believe they represent a tremendous advance against this disease, said the UCSD study s principal investigator Asad Bashey, M.D., Ph.D., member of UCSD Cancer Center and assistant professor of medicine at UCSD School of Medicine. These early results are particularly exciting when you consider that we ve had precious little to offer patients who were not helped by conventional therapy. The UCSD clinical trial is open to patients with a sibling who can donate stem cells for the transplant. The cells are collected from the bloodstream through a simple outpatient process known as pheresis.
Patients receive relatively low doses of chemotherapy, followed by the transplant of donor cells.
Renal cell cancer accounts for approximately 3 percent of adult malignancies. It is more common in males than females and is rare in people under age 35. Cigarette smoking is the most definitive risk factor for the development of renal cell cancer, with approximately 25 to 30 percent of cases directly attributable to smoking.