Dr. Meeks on bladder cancer highlights at the 2023 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium

In this interview, Joshua J. Meeks, MD, PhD, discusses bladder cancer highlights from the 2023 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium. Meeks is the Edward M. Schaeffer, MD, PhD Professor of Urology and Associate Professor of Urology and Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois.

Transcription:

I'm excited about the bladder day. There's a lot of really interesting work that's going to be presented in both non muscle and muscle-invasive [bladder cancer] and even the metastatic setting. [One example] is seeing Roger Li, MD's, work on cell-free DNA prior to re-[transurethral resection of the bladder tumor]. I think we're all looking for that molecular biomarker that can potentially identify minimal residual disease. We kind of think that biomarker is going to be out there and, so [I'm] excited to see what he finds with that abstract. The big one is going to be Checkmate 274, as far as survival outcomes. Multiple IMvigor130 abstracts are going to be presented. Two that I saw that are really going to be exciting are about neoadjuvant chemo and immunotherapy. There are a number of trials that we're interested in to develop potentially combining chemotherapy and neoadjuvant immunotherapy, identifying people that may respond to the combo rather than just the chemotherapy alone. We know that in the metastatic setting, there hasn't been a benefit to putting chemotherapy and immunotherapy together. But the neoadjuvant setting is different, right? The goal is just to get a response, get the patient to surgery, and that's where the surgery can remove any residual disease. So there may be a benefit there. Another big one is Keynote 057 Cohort B. That's the papillary disease that's present after BCG-unresponsive disease. Cohort A led to a new indication for pembrolizumab [Keytruda] in BCG-unresponsive disease. It'll be great to see what the data look like and compare them with Cohort A.

This transcription was edited for clarity.