"Dr. Galsky Discusses Ongoing Combination Immunotherapy Trials In Bladder Cancer" - Angelica Welch
The treatment landscape of bladder cancer has undergone a transformation in the last few years, most notably with the approval of five checkpoint inhibitors. With all of these new options, Matthew Galsky, MD, professor of medicine, urology, hematology and medical oncology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said that the question now is whether immunotherapy is more beneficial as a monotherapy or in combination. “The first-line treatment of patients with metastatic bladder cancer has been chemotherapy for the past several decades—either cisplatin-based in eligible patients, or carboplatin-based for those who are cisplatin-ineligible. We know that chemotherapy has a response rate of about 30 to 50 percent in patients with metastatic bladder cancer, particularly with cisplatin-based therapy. A small proportion of those patients will have durable responses, but for the majority of patients, the responses are relatively short-lived and, ultimately, patients progress,” Dr. Galsky said. This had led to two large international randomized trials. These trials are addressing the question of whether we should combine immunotherapy with chemotherapy or use immunotherapy alone in patients with metastatic bladder cancer.
- Matthew Galsky, MD, Professor, Medicine, Hematology and Medical Oncology, Urology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai