The therapeutic landscape of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has greatly expanded in the last decade.

Clinicians are used to classify RCC based on tumor histology, distinguishing the most frequent clear cell RCC type from the other RCC subtypes, which are simplistically grouped as non-clear cell RCC.

To date, the only validated systems for prognostically stratifying patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma rely on the evaluation of clinical factors, since no molecular biomarkers with a prognostic or predictive value have been identified so far.

A Efforts are directed at delineating signaling pathways underlying clear cell and non-clear cell RCC carcinogenesis, possibly identifying driven-mutations as potential targets for therapy.

Novel molecular targets for therapy (such as MET, FGFR, PD-1/PD-L1) are under investigation.