The annual meeting of the 2015 American Urological Assoication (AUA) is being held in New Orleans… Yes, we’re on the third and final leg of our Louisiana trip encompassing AAI, ASGCT and now the triumvirate of AUA-SBUR-SUO.

This morning, I attended the Urologic Oncology Research Symposium, “High impact science in urologic oncology and progress in biomedical imaging.”  In particular, I was keen to hear about the latest research in urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) with regards to checkpoint blockade with anti-PDL1 and PD-1 therapies.

In the past, any session on bladder cancer guaranteed the lucky (or hapless) presenters with an audience of a dozen or so people.  Not any more – the room was packed with standing room only very quickly – a nice change for a disease that has seen no new therapies for 30 years.

Part of this renewed enthusiasm is due to the excitement for the checkpoint therapies making a huge impact in this disease, at least in clinical trials to date. While waiting for the session to start, one urologist I spoke to told me he bought the ASCO Virtual Meeting last year just to hear Dr Tom Powles talk on anti-PDL1 therapy with MPDL3280A in advanced urothelial cancer. What did you think of it, I asked?

“Wow, just wow!”

Later this month an update on the more mature data from that phase I trial is due at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) from Dr Daniel Petrylak (Yale)… who just happened to be one of the presenters at AUA this morning.

He discussed the checkpoint data with atezolizumab (MPDL3280A) in urothelial bladder cancer, as well as the pembrolizumab data from ESMO last fall and what’s happening with nivolumab. These drugs are quite different in many ways, not just in terms of the efficacy, but also in terms of the biomarker data, as we discovered today.

Subscribers can log-in to read our latest insights or you can purchase access to BSB Premium Content. 

This content is restricted to subscribers

Posted by