Researchers have come up with a groundbreaking new treatment for advanced bladder cancer.
The condition has not seen any major treatment advances in over 30 years, so the finding is extremely significant, Queen Mary, University of London reported. The treatment employs an antibody (MPDL3280A) which blocks a protein (PD-L1) believed to shield the cancer from immune detection.
In a phase one, multi-center international clinical trial, researchers looked at 68 patients suffering from advanced bladder cancer who had not responded to typical treatments such as chemotherapy. The patients received MPDL3280A, a cancer immunotherapy medicine being developed by Roche and their tumors were tested for the protein PD-L1.
After three weeks of treatment, 43 percent of the PD-L1-positive patients showed a reduction of tumor size; after 12 weeks this percentage rose to 52 percent. Two of the patients were completely cured by the treatment. Among PD-L1 negative patients, 11 percent responded positively to treatment as well.
"This study is a hugely exciting step forward in the search for alternative advanced bladder cancer treatment. For decades chemotherapy has been the only option, with a poor outcome and many patients too ill to cope with it. Not only has this investigational drug had a striking response rate, we can target this therapy for patients by screening specific protein PD-L1," said Tom Powles, who is the lead author of the study and a consultant medical oncologist at Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London.
Bladder cancer is the seventh most common type of cancer in the U.K., and about 10 percent of these cases are advanced (meaning the cancer has spread). These patients live an average of 12 to 18 months after initial diagnosis.
"We now need larger trials to confirm our findings, and as this drug has been given breakthrough designation status by the FDA, we hope to fast track this process so we can begin to give hope to the thousands of people affected by advanced bladder cancer each year," Powles concluded.
The findings were published in a recent edition of the journal Nature.
