Renal cancer is one of the deadliest urogenital diseases. In recent years, the advent of immunotherapy has led to significant improvement in the management of patients with renal cancer. Although cancer immunotherapy and its combinations had benefited numerous patients, several challenges need to be addressed. Apart from the high costs of treatment, the lack of predictive biomarkers and toxic side-effects have impeded its wider applicability. To address these issues, new biomarkers are required to predict responsiveness and design personalized treatment strategies. Recent advances in the field of single-cell sequencing and multi-dimensional spatial transcriptomics have identified clinically relevant subtypes of renal cancer. Furthermore, there is emerging potential for gene signatures based on immune cells, non-coding RNAs, and pathways such as metabolism and RNA modification. In this review article, we have discussed recent progress in the identification of gene signatures with predictive and prognostic potential in renal cancer.
Keywords: gene expression; immune checkpoint blockade; immunotherapy; prognostic genes; renal cancer; single-cell.