Dr. Petrylak on Immunotherapy in Bladder Cancer

Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology) and Urology, co-director, Signal Transduction Research Program, Yale Cancer Center, discusses immunotherapy agents for the treatment of patients with bladder cancer.

If atezolizumab receives an FDA approval, it will be the first second-line agent for patients with metastatic urothelial carcinoma, Petrylak explains. This will open up a series of new treatments. The median survival in patients with the disease is approximately 9 months; this is expected to be extended with atezolizumab.

One ongoing European study is randomizing patients to atezolizumab or chemotherapy, while another is comparing pembrolizumab (Keytruda) with chemotherapy as a second-line therapy for this patient population. An additional study is looking at immunotherapy in the first-line setting, Petrylak adds.