ELECTRIC

ELECTRIC: Early Detection of Hereditary Renal Cancer (RCC)

Lead 1: Dr Emma Woodward, University of Manchester

Lead 2: Dr Alice Fan, Stanford University

Lead 3: Prof Eamonn Maher, University of Cambridge

Project Summary

The number of cases of kidney cancer is increasing. When kidney cancer is found at an early-stage, patients can often be cured through early intervention. However, when kidney cancer is found at a stage where it has already spread throughout the body, which is the case in many non-hereditary cases, the chances of survival are often poor despite the availability of modern medical therapies. Studying hereditary kidney cancer is a good way to find and investigate markers, for example in the blood, that may allow for detecting kidney cancer earlier in both hereditary and non-hereditary cases. In this study, we will test if a candidate marker for early-stage kidney cancer that we have identified in the blood platelets of non-hereditary kidney cancer patients is also present in patients with hereditary kidney cancer. This will help to determine whether there are markers within the blood that are a realistic means to: (i) detect hereditary kidney cancer earlier, which currently requires costly and time-consuming repeat imaging, and; (ii) detect non-hereditary kidney cancer earlier, for which there is currently no screening test available.