Jason Muhitch, Ph.D., Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Genitourinary Translational Research Group in the Department of Immunology at Roswell Park, and Eric Kauffman, MD, Associate Professor of Oncology in the Departments of Urology and Cancer Genetics & Genomics, are senior authors of the study.

Nicholas Salgia, an MD/Ph.D. candidate through the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo who completed his thesis work in the lab of Dr. Muhitch is the first author.

The new insights arose from observations about sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma (sRCC), an aggressive subtype comprising 5% of all cases of kidney cancer. While this subtype, typically diagnosed in the late stages, is resistant to most anti-cancer therapies, a type of immunotherapy called immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has proved to be the exception.