Dr. Berg discusses unmet needs in metastatic urothelial cancer
“I think really identifying who's going to benefit from what combination for how long is going to be important,” says Stephanie Berg, DO.
In this video, Stephanie Berg, DO, an instructor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses unmet needs in the metastatic bladder cancer paradigm. There have been tremendous breakthroughs in this space with treatments such as immunotherapies, antibody-drug conjugates, and targeted agents. However, as Berg explains, a complete precision medicine approach–whereby the right patient receives the right treatment at the right time—remains an elusive goal. Berg is an instructor of medicine, Harvard Medical School, Lank Center for Genitourinary Oncology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
Transcript
I think it's really identifying the proper patient to receive which therapy because safety, as I mentioned, is really important. And these drugs can have lots of long-lasting side effects. So I think really identifying who's going to benefit from what combination for how long is going to be important. For example, with dosing—do they need x number of cycles? Does the patient need a lower dose? Would the lower dose have the same efficacy? So, I think, once we establish, perhaps, the best regimen from these trials, looking how to de-escalate for patients who have incurable disease so they can have a better quality of life I think will be really interesting to explore in the future.
The transcript has been edited for clarity.
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