A "game-changing" immunotherapy drug could lead to increased survival rates in bladder cancer patients

Patients with advanced bladder cancer treated with immunosuppressant drugs are a third less likely to see the disease come back and live longer than patients who received standard treatments, new research shows.

The expert who led the study said more patients could be cured if the new treatments from the “game-changing” study became the new standard of care.

The study found that patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer treated with the immunosuppressant drug duvalumab significantly reduced their risk of cancer progression or recurrence and were more likely to be alive two years after treatment. .

James Cato, professor of urology at the University of Sheffield and honorary consultant urological surgeon, who led the study, said it was a “major advance” in the treatment of bladder cancer.

“For many years, survival rates for advanced bladder cancer have stagnated, but our findings offer hope to thousands of patients facing this devastating diagnosis,” he said.

Experts from the University of Sheffield and Barts Cancer Institute at Queen Mary University of London included 1,063 patients with operable bladder cancer in their study.

The research was funded by AstraZeneca, which developed Durvalumab, and the results were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer were given either standard chemotherapy (cisplatin and gemcitabine) and surgery (n = 530), or chemotherapy plus durvalumab before surgery and eight cycles of durvalumab after surgery (533).

The final phase 3 clinical trial showed that patients who received immunotherapy were 32 percent less likely to experience cancer recurrence or progression and were more likely to be alive after two years.

Overall survival at two years was 82.2% in the durvalumab group and 75.2% in the comparison group.

Durvalumab (brand name Imfinzi) is a treatment for non-small cell lung cancer but is being tested in other cancers as well.

Professor Kato said the findings are important for patients undergoing chemotherapy who suffer from its many and often debilitating side effects.

“Our hope is that this treatment will become available to NHS patients as soon as possible after regulatory approval by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency and become the new standard of care,” he said.

Recent research suggests that cases of bladder cancer will increase by 50% over the next two decades, yet awareness of bladder cancer in the UK remains low.

Currently, about half of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer have a recurrence within three years.

Syed Hussain, professor and honorary consultant in medical oncology at the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and principal investigator of the trial, said: “The magnitude of the survival benefit seen would certainly be a game-changer.”

He added: This is an exciting time in the management of muscle invasive bladder cancer.

We found no additional survival benefit in previous trials examining adjunctive therapy in combination with standard of care preoperative cisplatin-based chemotherapy.

“By offering these exciting new treatments earlier in the course of the disease, we will see more patients treated with muscle invasive bladder cancer.”

Ian Flower, 63, from Sheffield, took part in the trial and said he hoped the treatment would be available to other patients.

“I was happy to help with the trial, not just for myself, but in the hope that it might help other patients,” he said.