Recognising the limits of surgery while pushing the boundaries, he was one of the first to study medical therapy prior to planned nephrectomy to select patients with metastatic kidney cancer likely to benefit from this approach. At that time, MD Anderson was the global leader in offering this concept to patients, and their publications laid the foundations for similar studies in Europe. Both the improved selection criteria for surgery and the concept of deferred cytoreductive nephrectomy answered to an unmet clinical need and inspired clinical kidney cancer research in Europe to test the sequence of medical therapy and cytoreductive nephrectomy in the randomised SURTIME trial. Dr. Wood and his team pioneered neoadjuvant treatment concepts for high-risk and locally advanced kidney cancer and he was the first to lead and report an international randomised controlled trial of adjuvant heat shock protein-peptide complex for use as a patient-specific vaccine.

Dr. Wood authored more than 400 peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters. His work will leave a legacy behind reaching far beyond the confines of the MD Anderson and continues to motivate researchers around the globe as can be witnessed in the recent international trials on deferred cytoreductive nephrectomy after immune checkpoint inhibitor combination therapy.