Dr. Balar Discusses Study of Immunotherapy Combination in Bladder Cancer

Arjun V. Balar, MD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, director, Genitourinary Medical Oncology Program, NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses a study of an immunotherapy combination in bladder cancer.

In the trial, patients were treated with durvalumab (Imfinzi) plus tremelimumab. Nearly 170 patients were enrolled, with a high representation of patients with metastatic bladder cancer. The median age was 66, and nearly 65% of patients had at least 1 prior line of chemotherapy. Therefore, Balar says, this was an appropriate study for second-line treatment. He adds that 81% of patients had visceral metastatic disease, with 32% having liver metastases. In general, this represented a patient population with a poor prognosis.

At a median follow-up of 11.6 months, researchers saw an overall response rate of 20.8% for the entire cohort. Post hoc, Balar says they looked at responses based on PD-L1 expression. This secondary analysis found that patients who had high PD-L1 expression had a response rate of 29%.