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Medullary renal carcinoma (MRC) is a rare and fatal cancer that occurs primarily in patients with sickle cell trait (SCT) and sickle cell disease (SCD). The typical patient with MRC is a young male (mean age of 22 years) of African or Mediterranean descent. 
 

The disease is uniformly fatal, with a life expectancy from the time of initial diagnosis of only 15 weeks. There are no known effective radiation or chemotherapy treatments for the disease.
 

RMC is highly aggressive, poorly responsive to chemotherapy, often metastatic at diagnosis, affects young men with sickle cell trait, and median overall survival (mOS) is less than 12 months.
 

RMC is poorly understood, with fewer than 220 cases described in the medical literature to date.
 

In total, patients with RMC a majority were male (71%), African American (87%), and had metastatic disease (71%). In the largest cohort to date of patients with RMC, we found a dismal median survival of less than 8 months.
 

More than 300 million people worldwide have sickle cell trait (Centers for Disease Control). The vast majority of patients are African American.