Biomarkers for evaluating the clinical response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in renal cell carcinoma (Review)

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a highly aggressive neoplastic disease of the renal parenchyma that is characterized by an intrinsic resistance to cytotoxic chemotherapy; for this reason, curative treatment is only achieved through surgical intervention in its early stages. The successful treatment of advanced or metastatic RCC will require the combined use of novel targeted therapies such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors, vascular endothelial growth factor blockers and immune checkpoint blockade therapies. Unfortunately, not all patients are candidates for such treatments, and at present, it is not possible to predict a patient's therapeutic response or likelihood to develop treatment‑associated complications. The present review described the literature focusing on the use of biomarkers for predicting patients' responses to therapies that induce immune checkpoint blockade in RCC.