Bladder Cancer Field Leans Towards Patient-Centered Care

Tracy Rose, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Medicine in the Division of Oncology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discusses the promising outlook of the current bladder cancer space.

Though cisplatin-based chemotherapy as the standard-of-care for muscle-invasive bladder cancer prior to surgery with radical cystectomy works, researchers are always aiming to come up with new and innovative treatments. According to Rose, investigators are currently working on how to avoid surgery altogether for these patients.

As of now, there are various large, randomized studies ongoing, including RETAIN-2 (NCT02710734) and A031701 (NCT03609216), which look to create greater responses in this patient population.

Rose notes that understanding which patients should or should not get combination therapies, immunotherapies, or other targeted therapies is key in gaining a further understanding of what works. Additionally, the field is moving quickly towards personalized care and finding what treatment works best for each individual patient.

Transcription:

0:08 | There's lots of big, randomized studies. All of the current combination studies right now are using gemcitabine and cisplatin backbone as what we're combining immunotherapy with, and I think some of those studies should consider using other backbones, like the dose-dense regimens, to see if perhaps that can give us even greater responses or be better partners for immunotherapy.

0:34 | Figuring out which patients should get combination therapies, and which shouldn't, figuring out which patients should get immunotherapy and which shouldn't, should get other targeted therapies that have slightly higher response rates [is exciting]. I think that is really where the field is going and sort of personalized care and not a one size fits all for either perioperative therapy or metastatic therapy of sort of what treatment is really best for you.