Dr. Grivas on Emerging Biomarkers in Urothelial Cancer

Petros Grivas MD, PhD, director, University of Washington Medicine’s Genitourinary Cancers Program, associate professor, Oncology, University of Washington, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, discusses emerging biomarkers in advanced urothelial cancer.

Physicians have developing data regarding emerging biomarkers in advanced urothelial cancer. In May 2018, the FDA released a statement commenting on the potential role of PD-L1 immunohistochemistry testing to predict whether patients would respond better or worse to immune checkpoint inhibitors. Predicting response to therapy based on PD-L1 expression is not part of clinical practice, says Grivas.

It may become another debate whether physicians consider that biomarker expression further. For the time being, Grivas says it is not a companion diagnostic. It is, however, something to look for alongside tumor mutational burden, gene expression profiling and subtypes, DNA damage response to mutations, and circulating tumor DNA. These will be examined in prospective clinical trials to evaluate their clinical utility, says Grivas.