Genitourinary Cancers

The emergence of checkpoint inhibitors has transformed the second-line treatment of patients with metastatic bladder cancer. However, questions regarding the utility of immunotherapy in the frontline setting remain unanswered, leaving chemotherapy as the standard-of-care option.

Circulating tumor DNA positivity identified patients with high-risk muscle-invasive urothelial cancer who were likely to derive improvements in disease-free survival and overall survival from adjuvant atezolizumab vs observation.

December 11, 2020 - The European Medicine Agency’ s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use has granted a positive opinion to avelumab as a single agent, frontline maintenance option for adult patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who are free of disease progression after platinum-based chemotherapy.

As the biology of renal cell carcinoma becomes better understood, so does the management of the disease, including the use of novel therapies.

December 2, 2020 - Patients with high-grade Bacillus Calmette-Guérin unresponsive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer who responded to the investigational gene therapy nadofaragene firadenovec had a lower rate of cystectomy and delayed time to cystectomy compared with those who did not respond.

November 25, 2020 — Although metastatic urothelial carcinoma remains generally incurable, management of bladder cancer has witnessed several multidisciplinary advances in the past few years.

November 20, 2020 - The FDA has approved durvalumab for an additional dosing option, a fixed dose of 1500 mg every 4 weeks, in the approved indications of unresectable stage III non-small cell lung cancer after chemoradiation and previously treated advanced bladder cancer.

In this review, authors highlight multidisciplinary treatment for patients with advanced disease, and integrating systemic therapy options with surgery and radiation therapy.

November 17, 2020 - Primary chemoablation with UGN-102 was found to induce durable responses in patients with low-grade, intermediate-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer.

Chung-Han Lee, MD, PhD, discusses the promise of telaglenastat in renal cell carcinoma and the research efforts examining the agent in different combinations.

November 14, 2020 - A novel combination comprised of the TKI cabozantinib plus the PD-1 inhibitor nivolumab and the CTLA-4 inhibitor ipilimumab is under exploration in treatment-naïve patients with intermediate or poor risk advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma in the phase 3 COSMIC-313 trial.

Daniel J. George, MD, discusses the expanding role of cabozantinib in renal cell carcinoma.

Chung-Han Lee, MD, PhD, discusses the rationale for evaluating telaglenastat in renal cell carcinoma.

Matthew T. Campbell, MD, MS, discusses the expanding role of cabozantinib in renal cell carcinoma.

Thomas Hutson, DO, PharmD, discusses remaining questions regarding the durability of responses to immunotherapy in patients with renal cell carcinoma.

Tian Zhang, MD, discusses the combination of ieramilimab and spartalizumab in advanced malignancies.

Monoclonal antibodies have played a key role in the development of personalized oncology and have proven antitumor activity through multiple mechanisms, including direct transmembrane signaling leading to apoptosis, complement mediated cytotoxicity, antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity, and inhibiting tumor vasculature and stroma.

Seth P. Lerner, MD, FACS, discusses the complexities of treating LG-UTUC and how mitomycin gel for instillation addresses an unmet need in this space.

November 10, 2020 - The combination of pembrolizumab plus lenvatinib significantly improved progression-free survival, overall survival, and the objective response rate compared with sunitinib, when used in the frontline treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma.

The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has led to delays in elective and potentially curative surgeries for patients with cT1b-cT2b renal cell carcinoma but research has indicated that surgical delays of up to and beyond 3 months did not result in an increased risk of pT3a upstaging or comprise overall survival.