Bladder cancer: what are the new treatments?

On the occasion of this month of mobilization against bladder cancer, the French Association of Urology (AFU) lists the latest therapeutic innovations intended to treat this serious illness.

Bladder: “immunotherapies have changed the prognosis of metastatic cancers”

“Therapeutic innovations are appreciably numerous and provide an improvement in the management of bladder cancers”, first indicates the institution. “Immunotherapies, with immune checkpoint inhibitors targeting PD-1 at the top of the list, have changed the prognosis of metastatic cancers over the past 10 years,” she adds.

Over the past year, the development of their use in earlier phases of the disease has made it possible to demonstrate the benefit of prescribing nivolumaben in an adjuvant situation, that is to say in the very first months after surgery (cystectomy) to treat cancers at high risk of recurrence.

Bladder cancer: “ADCs reduce the side effects of chemotherapy

At more advanced stages of the disease, the delivery of chemotherapy in combination with antibodies targeting specific surface molecules of cancer cells (“Drug Conjugate Antibodies” or “ADCs”) makes it possible to treat bladder cancer more effectively while by reducing the side effects of chemotherapy.

“Enfortumab vedotin is the first ADC to have demonstrated benefit in prolonging the lives of patients after they have received conventional chemotherapy and immunotherapy,” specify the experts.

“Most recently, this ADC, in combination with pembrolizumab immunotherapy, demonstrated the ability to halve the risk of death in patients newly diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic disease,” they add.

This immunotherapy had already demonstrated a benefit for patients who received chemotherapy and for those who cannot benefit from this treatment. “It is therefore to be hoped that health authorities will quickly validate its use in this new indication for the benefit of patients,” estimates the AFU.

Bladder cancer: “new levers for action”

Finally, new levers of action against cancer cells are being developed. Concretely, patients whose cancer presents genetic alterations of a protein called FGFR can benefit from treatment with an inhibitor of this molecule, erdafitnib. Other proteins such as HER2 offer similar prospects.

Bladder cancer: what are the chances of survival?

Bladder cancers are 4 times more common in men and are most often diagnosed around the age of 70.

Between 13,000 and 20,000 new people are affected each year in France by this disease. When bladder cancer is caught in time, survival is more than 80% at 5 years. But if the diagnosis is made at the metastatic stage, this figure drops to 5%.

Smoking is the number one risk factor for bladder cancer. In 80 to 90% of cases, the first symptom of bladder cancer is the presence of visible blood in the urine.