Prognostic factors in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma treated with VEGF-targeted agents

The medical treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) has undergone a paradigm shift during the last decade with the approval of five drugs targeting vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) or its receptors (bevacizumab, sunitinib, sorafenib, pazopanib and axitinib) and of two drugs inhibiting the PI3K/AKT/mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathway (temsirolimus and everolimus). Median survival has now reached 2 years in mRCC patients receiving first-line targeted treatment. A considerable body of work was conducted on the identification of prognostic factors of survival in the earlier era of immunotherapy of mRCC. The current challenge is to pursue this work on biomarkers of prognosis for targeted therapy and, even more importantly, to identify predictive factors of response to such therapy. This review provides an overview of recent key work on prognostic and predictive factors in patients with advanced clear cell RCC treated with VEGF-targeted agents.