Familial renal cell carcinoma: clinical and molecular genetic aspects

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) accounts for 2% of all human cancer, but familial cases are infrequent. Riches (1963) and Griffin et al. (1984) in a population-based case-control study found a family history of renal cell carcinoma in 2.4% of affected patients compared to 1.4% of controls. Nevertheless the importance of inherited tumours in clinical practice and medical research is disproportionate to their frequency. In clinical practice recognition of familial RCC can provide opportunities to prevent morbidity and mortality by appropriate screening. In medical research recent advances in molecular genetics offer the prospect of isolating the genes involved in the pathogenesis of familial RCC and of the more common sporadic cases. In this article we review the clinical and molecular genetics of inherited renal cell carcinoma (adenocarcinoma or hypernephroma).