Aurora Life Sciences

Research Project, 2016 – 2017

Finding good biomarkers for cancers will allow both early detection and better treatment strategies, which benefits patients, and also saves costs at the clinical level. For the most common form of kidney cancer, clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), there is currently no approved biomarker in use. We discovered a ccRCC biomarker through our research, and our aim in this project is to develop a diagnostic test which could aid 2 million critical medical decisions per year.

Our clinicians identified two critical medical decisions in which our biomarker could change ccRC treatment. Confined ccRCC is treated with surgery. However, up to 20% of these cases are found benign after surgery. Advanced ccRCC is treated with targeted drugs. Evaluating the effectiveness of drugs for ccRCC can be done at the earliest only after 3 months. Both cases result in unnecessary costs and worse survival outlook for patients. We plan to validate the use of our biomarker in evaluating these clinical cases, so to enable informed decisions in the future.