The genitourinary cancer symposium is one of the most important conferences focused on cancers of the prostate, penis, urethra, testes, bladder and kidney. This year the genitourinary symposium celebrated 10 years – its theme was 'integrating biology into patient-centric care'. The conference offered educational sessions and oral and poster abstract presentations; the general sessions throughout the meeting focused on prevention, screening, diagnosis, multidisciplinary treatment, translational research and current controversies in the field. Here, we report the main news reported at the symposium about the treatment of metastatic renal cell carcinoma and castration resistant prostate cancer.