Dr. Bochner on Future Treatment Strategies in Early-Stage NMIBC

Bernard H. Bochner, MD, FACS, Sir Murray F. Brennan Chair in Surgery, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, discusses future treatment strategies in early-stage nonmuscle—invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC).

It is important to understand that there are a variety of risk groups to categorize patients with NMIBC, Bochner says. High-risk patients are unresponsive to Bacillus Calmette-Guérin intravesical immunotherapy. These patients should be referred to medical oncologists because checkpoint inhibitors are starting to make headway in that space.

Moreover, it is important to treat these patients aggressively because NMIBC tends to progress to muscle-invasive disease or present with local metastases if therapy is delayed. In the near future, urologists and medical oncologists are going to work closely to understand the biology of bladder cancer in order to integrate new systemic therapies like PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, Bochner predicts.