New Treatment for Kidney Cancer?

B O S T O N, Sept. 13 -- An experimental treatment for advanced kidney cancer using blood cells donated by a sibling completely or partially reversed the often lethal disease, doctors at the National Institute of Health are reporting.

Cancer researchers already are exploring whether this new technique may open up another avenue for treating kidney tumors, as well as other forms of cancer.

The small study involved only 19 patients with kidney cancer that had spread, or metastasized, throughout their body, a stage where only 20 percent of patients are expected to survive beyond a year.

In the study, which will be published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, nearly 50 percent of the patients who received the treatment survived the year, with 10 showing improvement. In three cases the tumors completely regressed.

“We are very encouraged by the early high response rate in our first group of patients treated,” said lead investigator Dr. Richard Childs of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute’s hematology unit in Bethesda, Maryland.

Who is at Risk? Kidney cancer affects 31,000 Americans annually, killing 11,900 of them, according to the American Cancer Society. Those at special risk include males, smokers and those over the age of 50.

Kidney cancer warning signs include blood in the urine, lower back pain or a lump in the belly. When the disease is caught early and can be surgically removed, it has a fairly good prognosis.

But for patients like those in the study with advanced renal cell carcinoma, or kidney cancer which has spread throughout the body, the disease is usually fatal within a year.

Chemotherapy is often ineffective on kidney cancer, while newer drugs such as immunotherapies that stimulate the immune system to fight off cancer only seem to work in a small number of patients.

This new work is important because it may have uncovered an additional approach for the treatment of cancer, experts say.