Introduction: Major progress in treatment of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has occurred in the past decade.
Areas covered: This review reports the background on the potential implication of the EGF/EGFR pathway in RCC, the different data on EGFR positivity in RCC and results from prospective Phase II and III trials on lapatinib in RCC, along with other EGF/EGFR inhibitors.
Expert opinion: Despite important progress and the real revolution of the past decade in treatment of RCC, treatment still remains palliative most of the time. To improve treatment, it is necessary to understand whether a specific population could be selected on a molecular feature of the tumor. Until there is better knowledge of the biology, further development of drugs such as lapatinib cannot be supported.