Dr. Balar on Biomarkers of Immunotherapy Response in Bladder Cancer

Arjun V. Balar, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, director, Genitourinary Medical Oncology Program, NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses biomarkers of immunotherapy response in patients with bladder cancer.

In metastatic bladder cancer, there has been recent progress with biomarkers to help researchers predict who will and will not respond to checkpoint inhibitors. For example, PD-L1 expression appears to be useful particularly in the frontline metastatic setting. However, in high-risk non—muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), data presented by Balar at the 2019 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium suggest that PD-L1 expression is not as predictive as it is in advanced disease.

Balar adds that other biomarkers need to be tested like tumor mutational burden in the metastatic setting. In NMIBC, it is still too early to tell if any biomarkers will emerge as effective.