Drug May Help Some With Advanced Bladder Cancer

Drug May Help Some With Advanced Bladder Cancer

About a quarter of older patients deemed too frail for chemo responded to Tecentriq, study found

WebMD News from HealthDay

By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

SUNDAY, June 5, 2016 (HealthDay News) -- Patients with advanced bladder cancer can sometimes be too old or unhealthy to withstand standard chemotherapy. However, some may gain hope from a new drug that unleashes the immune system to attack tumor cells, researchers reported Sunday.

Patients who responded to the drug Tecentriq (atezolizumab) had an average survival of nearly 15 months, about 5 to 6 months longer than people usually gain from platinum-based chemotherapy, said lead researcher Dr. Arjun Balar.

The treatment didn't help everyone, however: Only about a quarter of patients responded to the drug.

Still, any advance for this patient population is sorely needed, experts say. That's because about half of advanced bladder cancer patients cannot receive chemotherapy because they're too old to withstand chemo's toxic effects, explained Balar, who is assistant professor of medicine at Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone in New York City.

He noted that the average patient age for this disease is 70.

Other patients can't receive chemotherapy because they're suffering from kidney failure or other health problems, said Dr. Elizabeth Plimack, who reviewed the study findings. She directs genitourinary clinical research at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia.

This means that chemo is currently the only approved first-line treatment for bladder cancer.

"After that, there are no other standard therapies," Balar said. "These patients are really out of other options."

But, the new results suggest Tecentriq may serve as a significant advance for at least some of those patients, he said.

The drug's maker, Genentech, helped fund the study, which was presented Sunday at the American Society for Clinical Oncology annual meeting in Chicago.

As the researchers explained, cancers evade the immune system by switching off the ability of immune system cells to recognize tumor cells as a harmful intruder. Immunotherapy drugs like Tecentriq essentially remove cancer's "cloaking device" -- allowing the immune system to identify, target and destroy malignant cells.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Tecentriq last month for use in treating bladder cancer for patients who've already gone through chemotherapy. It's the first new medication approved in more than three decades for bladder cancer, Balar said.

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