Unmet need for Advanced Renal Cancer
Renal cancer is amongst the top ten cancers in adults with about 10% overall 5-year survival. Significant advances have been made in the past ten years with increasing rates of Progression Free Survival and Objective Response Rate albeit requiring chronic treatment with these expensive drugs that target the immune system. Despite these advances, complete response is observed in less than 10% of patients. There is a dire need for curative treatments for patients with renal cell carcinoma that are safe, affordable and do not require chronic treatment.
Oncorena develops a potential new breakthrough treatment for metastatic renal cancer based on a natural substance orellanine, found in certain types of mushrooms known to cause a selective kidney damage if inadvertently ingested. Oncorena scientists have synthesised the active compound and experimental data have shown that orellanine very effectively kills metastasized renal cell carcinoma cells. This observation needs to be tested and verified in patients. Orellanine has the potential to become a significantly better medicine than today´s standard of care and possibly also to cure metastasized renal cell cancer in selected patients.
Oncology leaders are searching for curative treatment of advanced renal cancer
The biggest challenge in advanced renal cell carcinoma is that most patients cannot be cured with current medical therapy,” David F. McDermott, MD, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and director of biologic therapy and cutaneous oncology programs at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, told HemOnc Today. “Developing treatments that induce disease remission and eventually lead to cure is the highest priority for these patients.”