Metastatic kidney cancer clinical trial keeps jazz pianist playing on

Billy Foster is an accomplished jazz pianist. He is also a cancer survivor. More than a decade after surgery for stage 1 kidney cancer, Foster’s disease recurred and metastasized, or spread, to his lungs.

Foster’s care team at the University of Chicago Medicine enrolled him in an experimental clinical trial of a drug called linifanib. The drug worked and Foster’s disease remained stable until one of his liver tumors began to grow. He successfully underwent a chemoembolization procedure to kill the single growing tumor with interventional radiology, and remained on linifanib without further disease progression until the drug was discontinued.

At that time, his UChicago Medicine cancer care team switched Foster to a similar medication called axitinib, which had just been approved by the FDA. Foster’s disease has been completely controlled by this medication and he has been on it ever since.
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