At the 2025 ASCO Annual Meeting, Dr. Emre Yekedüz, a medical oncologist and research fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, emphasized that the future of kidney cancer care is increasingly centered on personalization.

He pointed to ongoing efforts to match patients with treatments most likely to benefit them, particularly through the use of biomarkers and exploratory analyses across early-stage and metastatic kidney cancer trials.

He also noted growing interest in the gut microbiome’s role in kidney cancer outcomes. Although many findings still need validation, Yekedüz believes precision medicine and post-immunotherapy combination strategies are bringing new hope to patients.

What is Kidney Cancer?

Kidney cancer can develop in different parts of the kidney and includes several types. The most common in adults is renal cell carcinoma, which begins in the lining of small tubes that filter blood and help produce urine. Transitional cell cancer forms in the renal pelvis, the area in the center of the kidney where urine collects. Wilms tumor, a rare type, usually occurs in children, according to the National Cancer Institute.

Transcript:

What are the key themes or takeaways from the 2025 ASCO Meeting that you believe patients with kidney cancer should be most aware of?

There is a huge effort to select patients who will get more benefit from treatment. At ASCO25, there's a session on biomarkers in kidney cancer, and we’ll learn more about selecting the right patient for the right treatment. In this context, we will see results from new adjuvant, neoadjuvant, and metastatic kidney cancer trials, including exploratory analyses. We’ll also discuss the effect of the gut microbiome on kidney cancer. However, we still need more data and validation of these findings in the future.

I can say that the future is bright in kidney cancer. The new ASCO meeting will bring more hope and more options to our patients. We’ll be waiting for the next steps of early, promising data that will be presented at ASCO25. New combinations, especially after immunotherapy failure, are on the way, and precision medicine is getting stronger through exploratory analyses for selecting the right patient for the right treatment. Today, we have more hope than yesterday.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness

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