Systemic therapy for bladder cancer, both localized muscle-invasive disease and metastatic disease, has seen minimal progress over the past two decades. Current approaches rely upon cytotoxic chemotherapy combinations aimed at increasing cure rates or achieving palliation and disease control, but these regimens are fraught with short- and long-term toxicities and outcomes remain suboptimal. The emergence of systemic immunotherapies that can provide durable remissions in subsets of patients with other malignancies has the potential to transform the field, and early phase trials have begun to demonstrate activity in some patients with metastatic bladder cancer. In this article, we review the current state of systemic therapy for bladder cancer and discuss the current literature and ongoing trials utilizing various immunotherapies.
Future oncology (London, England). 2016 Jul 12 [Epub ahead of print]
Matthew Zibelman, Elizabeth R Plimack
Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple Health. 333 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA., Fox Chase Cancer Center, Temple Health. 333 Cottman Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA.