This is a summary of a paper published in a medical journal that describes the results of a study called CheckMate 274. This study looked at a new treatment for muscle-invasive urothelial cancer, a type of cancer found in the urinary tract that has spread from the inner lining of the urinary tract or bladder and into the surrounding muscle wall where it can then spread to other parts of the body. The standard treatment for muscle-invasive urothelial cancer is surgery to remove affected parts of the urinary tract. However, cancer returns in more than half of people after this surgery. Adjuvant therapy is given to people after surgery with muscle-invasive urothelial cancer with a goal to reduce the risk of the cancer coming back; however, at the time this study started, there was no standard adjuvant treatment.
In the CheckMate 274 study, researchers compared nivolumab with a placebo as an adjuvant treatment for people with muscle-invasive urothelial cancer. The aim of the study was to understand how well nivolumab worked to reduce the chance of the cancer returning after surgery. The study also looked at what side effects (unwanted or unexpected results or conditions that are possibly related to the use of a medication) people had with treatment.
The results showed that people who received nivolumab versus placebo: Survived longer before the cancer was detected again, including people who had programmed death ligand-1 (shortened to PD-L1) on their cancer cells. Survived longer before a secondary cancer outside of the urinary tract was detected. Experienced no differences in health-related quality of life (the impact of the treatment on a person's mental and physical health). Had similar side effects to the people who received nivolumab in other studies. Clinical Trial Registration: NCT02632409 (ClinicalTrials.gov).
Future oncology (London, England). 2023 Mar 15 [Epub ahead of print]
Dean F Bajorin, J Alfred Witjes, Jürgen E Gschwend, Michael Schenker, Begoña P Valderrama, Yoshihiko Tomita, Aristotelis Bamias, Thierry Lebret, Shahrokh F Shariat, Se Hoon Park, Dingwei Ye, Mads Agerbaek, Deborah Enting, Ray McDermott, Pablo Gajate, Avivit Peer, Matthew I Milowsky, Alexander Nosov, João Neif Antonio, Krzysztof Tupikowski, Laurence Toms, Bruce S Fischer, Anila Qureshi, Sandra Collette, Keziban Unsal-Kacmaz, Edward Broughton, Dimitrios Zardavas, Henry B Koon, Matthew D Galsky
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY, USA., Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands., Department of Urology, Technical University Munich, Munich, Germany., Nectarie Oncology Center, Craiova, Romania., Hospital Universitario Virgen del Rocío, Seville, Spain., Niigata University Graduate School of Medical & Dental Sciences, Niigata, Japan., National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece., Urology Department, Hôpital Foch, Université Paris-Saclay, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, Versailles, France., Weill Cornell Medical College New York, NY, USA., Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, South Korea., Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center, Shanghai, China., Aarhus University Hospital, Aarhus, Denmark., Guy's & St. Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK., St. Vincent's University Hospital & Cancer Trials Ireland, Dublin, Ireland., Ramon y Cajal University Hospital, Madrid, Spain., Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa, Israel., University of North Carolina Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, Chapel Hill, NC, USA., Federal State Budget Institution NN Petrov National Medical Research Center of Oncology of the Ministry of Health Care of the Russian Federation, St. Petersburg, Russia., Hospital de Amor de Barretos-Pio XII Foundation, Barretos, Brazil., Subdivision of Urology, Wroclaw Comprehensive Cancer Center, Wroclaw, Poland., Bristol Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ, USA., Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA.