Gary Steinberg, MD, on exploring novel combinations with bel-sar in NMIBC

Author(s):

Key Takeaways

Bel-sar is being investigated as an immunoablative agent to potentially replace TURBTs in NMIBC treatment, offering an office-based alternative.
Combining bel-sar with cytokine therapies like IL-15 or IL-12 may enhance immune responses, aiming for complete immune-ablation or immune-preventive effects.
The primary goal is to reduce tumor recurrence, enhance immune protection, and create T-cell memory for durable disease-free responses in NMIBC patients.

“There are a lot of other ways to look at bel-sar with other immunotherapy agents, other combinations, to truly help prevent patients needing to go to the operating room,” says Gary D. Steinberg, MD.

In this video, Gary D. Steinberg, MD, discusses the potential for exploration of novel combinations with belzupacap sarotalocan (bel-sar), a virus-drug conjugate currently in phase 1 development for non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). Steinberg is a professor of urology at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, Illinois.

Video Transcript:

What's most important with immunotherapy is to identify single immunologic agents and single therapies. But certainly, at some point, we will need to explore potential combinations. Will you get additional efficacy from combinations of immunologic agents? One of the things that we're seeing in non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer, with other products, we're looking at things that are chemoablative, so that we can avoid taking patients to the operating room, TURBTs, which require general anesthesia, patients [and] family members taking a day off of work, recovery, and so forth.

Can we identify bel-sar as an ideal immunoablative agent to avoid TURBTs? Can we use it as an adjuvant treatment, if you've had a TURBT? Then, inject various areas in the bladder to help prevent tumors from coming back. Are there novel combinations that makes sense, potentially with cytokine therapy, such as with IL-15 or IL-12 plus bel-sar, to rev up the immune system to become a complete immune-ablation effect, or even immune-preventive effects? There are a lot of other ways to look at bel-sar with other immunotherapy agents, other combinations, to truly help prevent patients needing to go to the operating room. This is a treatment all done in the office. More importantly, what patients want not only is having a therapy cure their tumor; they want it to be durable. They don't want the tumor to come back. One of the things that's most frustrating for the patients with non–muscle-invasive bladder cancer is the frequent recurrences. If we can decrease the recurrences, enhance the immune protective effect, potentially create T-cell memory so that they have durable disease-free responses, they've avoided the operating room, I think that would be a great move forward.

This transcript was AI generated and edited by human editors for clarity.