How Immunotherapy Is Transforming Bladder Cancer Treatment

My brother-in-law was recently treated for bladder cancer by the RGCIRC. They used immunotherapy to treat him, and it yielded positive results! In the past few years, immunotherapy has been increasingly used to treat bladder cancer as it was found to be very effective due to its ability to combat even advanced forms of cancer.

Types Of Treatment For Bladder Cancer

Five lakh people are diagnosed with bladder cancer each year. Numerous treatments are used in its early stages including bacteria-based immunotherapy (BCG), cancer surgery and chemotherapy. Advanced forms of this cancer are harder to treat, but recently, various types of immunotherapy have been quite successful at treating it.

Numerous checkpoint immunotherapies are being approved by medical associations and boards all over the world. Additionally, clinical trials are being used to explore new and promising forms of immunotherapy, both stand-alone treatments and in combination with other treatments such as chemotherapy.

Immunotherapy And Bladder Cancer Treatment In The Status Quo

In the 90s, BCG(Bacillus Calmette-Guérin) was first approved for patients seeking treatment for bladder cancer. It was used for those patients in the early stages of the disease, and in the recent tears, checkpoint immunotherapies have been used for those patients in the advanced stages of their bladder cancer treatment.

Numerous clinical trials have consistently demonstrated that these checkpoint immunotherapy treatments are effective in the advanced stage of the disease with response rates from patients ranging from 15% to 30% depending on the line of treatment and the study. It has also improved the survival rates of patients in the second-line treatment, i.e. patients whose cancer persists or progresses after initial chemotherapy treatment.

Also Read: URINARY BLADDER CANCER SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS

How Does Immunotherapy Work?

There is a certain protein on the surface of bladder cancer tumour cells which mask it from the immune cells of the human body, and therefore the immune system isn’t able to destroy the growing tumour, causing it to worsen.  The immunotherapy drugs remove these surface protein signals from the cancer cells. As a result, the immune system is able to identify and combat the cancer cells and shrink the tumour. Additionally, this immunotherapy also strengthens and stimulates the immune system of the body.

Like any other treatment, immunotherapy also has side effects, but these are minimal and usually do not get worse than rashes or tiredness.

Benefits Of Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy has emerged of a very popular form of bladder cancer treatment, as treatments such as chemotherapy tend to have adverse side effects. For those patients cannot tolerate chemotherapy as it is very taxing on the body or for whom chemotherapy stops working, immunotherapy is one of the best alternatives. It has been shown to shrink tumours in over 20% of patients, and it even freezes the size of the tumour in another 20%. These statistics are great, as almost half of the patients benefit substantially from it, and it can cause the tumour to stay dormant and not grow again for many years.

Clinical trials have been successful at combining checkpoint immunotherapy with chemoradiation treatment as an alternative to cystectomy, therefore allowing patients to keep their bladder. This is very beneficial for patients with bladder cancer as cystectomy is a devastating surgery that affects the quality of life of the patient permanently, And there are even prices that are testing methods in which no therapy can be combined with bladder preservation therapy.

Also Read: TREATING BLADDER CANCER: WHAT PATIENTS NEED TO KNOW

Future Of Immunotherapy

Immunotherapy therapy has a bright future in the field of cancer surgery with numerous new novel approaches being tested in clinical trials today. For instance, there is an antibody-drug called enfortumab vedotin that was approved in the United States, and the results were very positive with 44% of patients who did not respond to chemotherapy or checkpoint immunotherapy achieved results, and 85% of all patients had at least some level of tumour shrinkage. Like this, there are numerous other next-generation treatments be explored to treat bladder cancer with a form of immunotherapy.

Conclusion

Immunotherapy is clearly a very promising form of bladder cancer treatment, and in becoming exceedingly effective at treating the disease. For more details, you can contact RGCIRC, who from experience, have very qualified doctors and an excellent standard of care for their patients.