Systemic therapy of metastatic renal cell carcinoma: Review of the current literature

Renal cell carcinoma represents a neoplasm with usually aggressive behavior. Due to its nature, it is often diagnosed in an advanced stage or when metastatic dissemination has been occurred. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of the current management of metastatic renal cell carcinoma and briefly discuss the potential new therapeutic strategies for this disease. Review of the literature was performed in PubMed/MEDLINE, Cochrane, and EMBASE and we included English articles up to February 2018. Over the past years, many efforts have been made in the context of confronting metastatic disease and led to the introduction of targeted therapies. More available agent options, including various tyrosine kinase inhibitors and mammalian target of rapamycin inhibitors, can be served nowadays as the first-, second-, and third-line therapy in the metastatic setting of the disease providing better outcomes. Moreover, regarding the recent advances in the field of cancer immunotherapy, the landscape of metastatic renal cell carcinoma management is being shaped toward novel immunotherapeutic interventions alone or in combination with other types of therapy