Latest News

(UroToday.com) While cisplatin-based chemotherapy is a first-line treatment for muscle-invasive and metastatic bladder cancer, only a subset of patients responds to therapy. Nearly 15% of urothelial tumors have a somatic missense mutation in ERCC2, a nucleotide excision repair (NER) gene that confers increased sensitivity to cisplatin. However, a significant percentage of patients are ineligible for cisplatin-based […]

(UroToday.com) Various postulates including field cancerization, seeding, and intraepithelial migration have been proposed to explain the genetic relationship between the primary and recurrent bladder tumors and to identify their origins. Researchers from Lund University, Sweden, performed this study to investigate the genetic relationships in synchronous and metachronous bladder tumors.

(UroToday.com) While cisplatin-based chemotherapy is a mainstay for neoadjuvant and adjuvant treatment of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), and none of the reported biomarkers for predicting response have been implemented in the clinic thus far.

(UroToday.com) Intravesical Bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) is the first-line therapy for high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NIMBC). However, its mechanism of action is not fully understood. Dr. Alok Singh presented data from investigators at The Johns Hopkins University, where they have engineered a recombinant BCG (rBCG) that releases increased levels of STING agonist, c-di-AMP, and compared effects of […]

(UroToday.com) PURE-01 was an open-label, single-arm, phase 2 trial where three courses of 200mg pembrolizumab were administered in T2-4aN0M0 bladder cancer patients preceding radical cystectomy (RC).1 A proportion of these patients had residual invasive disease (ypT2-4) at radical cystectomy. Investigators from Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori explored the biological characteristics of pembrolizumab-resistant tumors in the […]

(UroToday.com) Application of immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) therapy has seen significant progress in the last few years. Agents targeting programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and its ligand PD-L1 have shown activity in locally advanced and metastatic urothelial carcinoma in the first- and second-line setting.1,2 However, a significant proportion of patients still perform poorly after receiving […]

(UroToday.com) The International Bladder Cancer Network (IBCN) concluded its annual meeting.  The board members and meeting organizers should be commended for their efforts on an incredibly informative and engaging virtual meeting featuring over 350 registered attendees and patient advocates.  A record number of abstracts were submitted internationally.

(UroToday.com) Dr. Stephen Williams, Urologist from the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, USA presented “Comparing Costs of Radical Versus Partial Cystectomy for Patients Diagnosed with Localized muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC): Understanding the Value of Surgical Care.”  The authors interrogated the SEER-Medicare database to identify 2,035 patients with cT2-4 bladder cancer treated with partial vs. […]

(UroToday.com) Dr. Sita Vermeulen, Genetic Epidemiologist at the Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands presented the “Protective effect of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) bladder instillations on pneumonia?”  BCG vaccination has been shown to induce trained immunity, with indirect evidence suggesting decreased rates of infection.  Investigators studied the impact of intravesical BCG for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer […]

(UroToday.com) Dr. Shomik Sengupta, Eastern Health, Melbourne, Australia presented “Lytic Effects of water on bladder cancer cell lines: implications for clinical use of water irrigation to reduce recurrence.”  The investigators present a companion systematic review of continuous washout of the bladder (CBI) utilization for nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) recurrence prevention.