Bladder Cancer

As the year comes to a close, we revisit some of this year’s top content on bladder cancer.

The combination yielded significant improvements in event-free survival, overall survival, and pathologic complete response rates vs neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

The combination demonstrated a disease-specific survival rate of 98.7% at 12 months and 96.0% at 36 months.

Bradley McGregor, MD, contextualizes recent data on emerging treatment regimens in high-risk, BCG-naïve NMIBC.

Abhishek Srivastava, MD, discusses the potential impact that UGN-103 might have on the treatment landscape for LG-IR-NMIBC.

"In my experience, when a treatment is well-tolerated and given on a predictable schedule, patients are more likely to adhere to therapy and remain engaged in long-term follow-up," Chauhan writes.

Daneshmand also emphasized the evolving, highly collaborative role between urologists and medical oncologists as perioperative systemic regimens expand.

Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH, MSc, recapped a debate at SUO 2025 on how to appropriately classify high-grade bladder tumors.

Nogapendekin alfa inbakicept was approved in combination with BCG in the US in April 2024.

Fed Ghali, MD, discusses the potential opportunity to de-escalate therapy in patients receiving perioperative EV/pembro.

"If 2025 showed us anything, it is the power of combining scientific progress with public engagement," writes Michael S. Cookson, MD, MMHC, FACS.

Gal Wald, MD, highlights patient-reported outcomes from a phase 2 trial of intravesical gemcitabine plus BCG for patients with BCG-exposed high-grade NMIBC.

The FDA has selected detalimogene voraplasmid to participate in the Chemistry, Manufacturing, and Controls Development and Readiness Pilot Program.

The investigators reported a high-grade CR rate at any time of 72.4% (21 of 29 patients).

Eugene Pietzak, MD, highlights the background and design of the ongoing phase 3 GAIN trial, exploring the combination of gemcitabine and BCG in BCG-exposed NMIBC.

Siamak Daneshmand, MD, emphasizes that, at present, optimal patient selection remains unclear because resistance mechanisms and predictive biomarkers are not yet well understood.

DFS rate was 85.3% at 6 months (95% CI, 71.6-92.7), 74.3% at 12 months (95% CI, 59.2-84.6), and 69.2% at 18 months (95% CI, 53.4-80.6).

In patients with high-grade T1 disease, high-grade EFS was 100% and 3 months and at 6 months and 87.5% at 9 months.

Laura Bukavina, MD, MPH, offered her thoughts on the significance of the KEYNOTE-905 data and highlighted some remaining questions surrounding the regimen.

The overall CR rate was 83.7% (95% CI, 70.3-92.7).

Michael S. Cookson, MD, MMHC, FACS, shares his thoughts on the most exciting recent advances in bladder cancer treatment.

Joshua J. Meeks, MD, PhD, discussed the emerging role of ctDNA in guiding adjuvant and neoadjuvant strategies in patients with bladder cancer.

Forty-one of the 85 patients experienced disease persistence, progression, or recurrence.

The group agreed that the future of NMIBC treatment depends on biomarkers that can direct patients toward the therapy most likely to work.

Complete response at any time was 92% (23/25 patients), 84% (21/25) at 3 months, 87% (20/23) at 6 months, and 85% (17/20) at 9 months.