Insights from 2057 germline genetic tests in renal cell carcinoma patients support revisiting testing criteria

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) arises sporadically or in a hereditary context, with inherited cases accounting for less than 10%, depending on the genes analyzed. Next-generation sequencing has enabled the use of multigene panels (MGP) to characterize RCC linked to hereditary syndromes. The current French guidelines of the national reference network for hereditary renal cancers (PREDIR) recommend genetic testing for patients meeting specific clinical criteria. This study evaluates the diagnostic yield and the relevance of current criteria, the utility of MGP testing, and the added value of tumor analyses. We retrospectively analyzed 2057 RCC patients who underwent germline MGP testing across three French hospital laboratories. Tumor analysis results from 140 patients were also evaluated. The overall rate of germline pathogenic/likely pathogenic variants was 3.5%, with 39% in syndromic cases and 1.2% in apparently sporadic cases. Tumor analyses identified somatic pathogenic variants in 56.3% of cases. Our data support that the likelihood of identifying a germline PV is low in patients with sporadic single clear cell RCC, and that the clinical utility of testing all patients with other sporadic subtypes appears limited. This suggests a need to revise current testing criteria in patients with sporadic single RCC, for example, by lowering the age threshold for genetic testing from 45 to 40 years in clear cell RCC, and to 50 years in other subtypes. We also suggest incorporating tumor analyses to distinguish hereditary RCC from sporadic cases driven by tumor-specific pathogenic variants.