Patient Advocacy and Resources in Kidney Cancer - Dena Battle

February 6, 2019

Dena Battle, President KCCure joins Jaime Landman and Monty Pal for a discussion on development and establishing resources to assist in the fight against kidney cancer.  KCCure, is a research organization that funds high-impact, high-risk kidney cancer research through a peer-review processthrough an expert team of kidney cancer specialists, patients, caregivers, and kidney cancer advocates. The grants provide sources of funding that otherwise would not be available to these researchers. As a patient advocate, and through her work with KCCure, Dena hopes to provide resources to patients to educate themselves on the options they have, to enroll in clinical trials, to find the right physician for them, and to seek an opportunity free of disease.

Biographies:

Sumanta Kumar Pal, MD Associate Clinical Professor, Department of Medical Oncology & Therapeutics Research, Co-director, Kidney Cancer Program, Medical Oncologist, City of Hope

Jaime Landman, MD Professor and Chairman, UCI Department of Urology, UC Irvine Medical Center

Dena Battle is the President for KCCure. She began her career in Washington, DC, as a congressional aide, and went on to work as a lobbyist for more than 10 years, working primarily on tax and healthcare policy. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Johns Hopkins Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center and as a member of the Patient and Family Advisory Council. She has testified before the FDA – Oncological Drug Advisory Board (ODAC) and helped co-author an NCI-ASCO-sponsored paper on improving end-of-life care for cancer patients. In 2009, at the age of 40, Dena’s late husband Chris was diagnosed with metastatic kidney cancer. Together, they began a quest for the best care possible to combat the disease. Chris was treated at four different comprehensive cancer centers and participated in multiple clinical trials.