Genitourinary Cancers

No one biomarker is effective for all types of bladder cancer, says Michael Cookson, MD, a professor and chairman of the Department of Urology at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.

Urologists who are members of LUGPA are doing the right thing by being part of large group practices.

The use of multiparametric MRI in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer was explored in November during a continuing medical education course offered at the annual meeting of LUGPA

While Laszewski said the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is driving many of the changes, may end up being altered, he doesn't expect the program to be disbanded due to the political shift in legislative power.

In attending the Society of Urologic Oncology's annual meeting in Bethesda in early December, I was struck by the number of presentations focusing sharply on the burgeoning fields of biomolecular markers and immunotherapy and their application to urologic oncology.

Entrepreneur James Feldman, chief innovation officer of the Chicago-based company Shift Happens!, calls himself "a doctor for business."

Urologists hear quite a bit about risk from the legislative and regulatory angles.

William K. Oh, MD, Chief of the Division of Hematology and Medical Oncology, the Tisch Cancer Institute at Mount Sinai Medical Center, discusses recent updates in bladder cancer treatment.

From a limited first meeting in the late 1990s that included the leaders of a dozen large group practices, LUGPA has grown so much that its annual meeting this November will include up to 550 physicians and 200 administrators, filling the organization's usual Chicago venue to capacity and necessitating a move to a larger space next year.

A round-up of new drugs that are being investigated as treatments for genitourinary cancers.

The 12-month countdown to the adoption of ICD-10 has begun. ICD-10 represents the 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (usually referred to as "ICD"), now overseen by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Despite the promise associated with biomarker-based tools as a means of helping to guide cancer diagnosis and treatment, there is a potential stumbling block: insurance reimbursement.

Checkpoint inhibitors targeting the PD-1 receptor and its ligand, PD-L1, are showing efficacy in early-phase clinical trials in urothelial bladder cancer, generating the promise of new therapies for a disease that has not had a significant treatment advance in 30 years.

While biomarker-based tools designed to guide the diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer are emerging at an extraordinarily rapid rate, they are not exploding in the same practice-changing way in all genitourinary cancers.

Adding saracatinib to vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)-targeted therapy did not improve response rates or overall survival while adding to toxicity in VEGF-resistant metastatic renal cell carcinoma

Durable responses were obtained with the immune checkpoint inhibitor nivolumab, with a manageable safety profile, in a phase II dose-ranging trial conducted in patients with previously treated metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC).

Robert J. Motzer, MD, attending physician, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, provides an overview of a phase II study of nivolumab for the treatment of patients with clear cell metastatic renal cell carcinoma.