Dr. Sonpavde on the Next Steps for Atezolizumab in Urothelial Carcinoma

Guru Sonpavde, MD, director of Bladder Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses the next steps for the prognostic model for atezolizumab (Tecentriq) in patients with urothelial carcinoma.

According to Sonpavde, physicians have found the prognostic model to have good impact and value with atezolizumab. Physicians want to apply this model to other PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors, such as pembrolizumab (Keytruda). It is important to validate this model in the same setting of patients with urothelial carcinoma post-platinum therapy to determine if it holds up with other agents, Sonpavde adds.

PD-L1 expression was excluded from the model, explains Sonpavde. Every immunotherapy drug has been investigated by different companies who have done different assays to measure PD-L1. Adding PD-L1 expression into the model would make it non-applicable to a different agent where a different PD-L1 assay was used. It will be kept outside of the core model and investigated separately, he says.