There are no approved treatment options for patients with advanced bladder cancer after they’ve received standard chemotherapy and immune treatments, but the results of a phase II clinical trial led by Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital researchers demonstrate an effective treatment for this deadly disease.
There are no approved treatment options for patients with advanced bladder cancer after they’ve received standard chemotherapy and immune treatments, but the results of a phase II clinical trial led by Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital researchers demonstrate an effective treatment for this deadly disease. The findings were presented today at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago.
“We really haven’t had another therapy option for patients with urothelial or bladder cancer, so we’re very excited about these findings,” said study lead author Daniel P. Petrylak, M.D., professor of medical oncology and urology and co-director of the Signal Transduction Research Program at Yale Cancer Center.
In the multi-institutional study, a novel drug called enfortumab vedotin (EV) produced responses in 44% of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer who had been previously treated with chemotherapy and immune therapy using checkpoint inhibitors, which block proteins that stop the immune system from attacking cancer cells.
EV is an antibody-drug conjugate, a type of therapy that combines an antibody that targets a specific protein on the surface of tumor cells with a payload of powerful chemotherapy.
Read more at: Yale University
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