The evolving treatment landscape of advanced urothelial carcinoma.

Bladder cancer is the 10th most common cancer in the world and the 6th most common cancer among men. In the past few years, several new agents have been approved for the treatment of urothelial tumors. In this paper, we review the evolving treatment landscape of advanced urothelial carcinoma (UC).

Since 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved five immunotherapies targeting programmed cell death 1/programmed cell death 1 legend, an antinectin-4 antibody drug conjugate (ADC), and a fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibitor for the treatment of patients with advanced UC. Moreover, there are multiple targeted agents, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI), ADCs, and their combinations currently being tested in clinical studies with the goal of obtaining FDA approval.

Precision oncology efforts continue to advance our understanding of the UC biology and transform the existing treatment paradigms. An enlarging arsenal of treatment options promises further personalization of UC therapy.

Current opinion in oncology. 2021 May 01 [Epub]

Alexander Y Andreev-Drakhlin, Goar Egoryan, Amishi Y Shah, Pavlos Msaouel, Omar Alhalabi, Jianjun Gao

Division of Cancer Medicine, MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas., AMITA Health Saint Francis Hospital Evanston, Evanston, Illinois.