Earle Burgess: Interested in new treatments being developed for advanced (urothelial) bladder cancer?

Earle Burgess, Chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Section at Atrium Health, Levine Cancer Institute, shared on LinkedIn:

“Interested in new treatments being developed for advanced (urothelial) bladder cancer? Check out the latest details just published about disitamab vedotin (DV) below:

DV is a new “antibody-drug conjugate” being tested in patients with advanced urothelial cancer though is not yet approved for use outside of China. DV is an antibody that targets the protein “HER2” on the surface of cancer cells and has a chemotherapy molecule attached to it.

(Think: smart bomb. Antibody delivers the chemotherapy molecule to the cancer cells.)

Results were just published from two small studies conducted in China that tested DV in patients with advanced HER2+ urothelial cancer who had received at least one prior line of chemotherapy (i.e, patients with a poor prognosis).

These results suggest DV has significant anti-cancer activity:

1. Objective response rate (tumor shrinkage on scans): 50.5%
2. Median duration of response (how long tumor response was maintained): 7.3 months

These initial results look really promising and led to the approval of DV in China for treatment of patients with advanced, chemo-refractory HER2+ urothelial cancer.

Additional clinical trials are now underway outside of China and may lead to approvals in other countries if these early results are confirmed.

This is an important story to follow.

We’ll have to wait for the results of the ongoing DV trials, but I’m excited for the potential future use of DV in patients with advanced bladder cancer.”

For the article click here.
Source: Earle Burgess/LinkedIn