Enfortumab Vedotin and Pembrolizumab in Cisplatin-Eligible Bladder Cancer
Is this the end of the cisplatin era in bladder cancer? It sure seems that way. The results here are no surprise based on the signal we saw in the metastatic setting.
Is this the end of the cisplatin era in bladder cancer? It sure seems that way. The results here are no surprise based on the signal we saw in the metastatic setting.
Shout to all the rad/onc’s who read this! This was a meaningful signal that modern adjuvant pelvic radiotherapy (RT) could finally have a role for selected very high-risk post-cystectomy patients. The lack of immunotherapy in this cohort and absence of a statistically significant survival benefit suggests this is not an automatic new standard, but it certainly makes multidisciplinary discussion of RT more interesting.
At 2 years, estimated event-free survival was 74.7% in the enfortumab vedotin–pembrolizumab group and 39.4% in the control group (hazard ratio) HR 0.4 estimated overall survival was 79.7% and 63.1% HR 0.50. Perioperative enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab new standard of care for cisplatin ineligible patients who are candidates for surgery.
Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) was used to identify patients who may benefit from adjuvant immunotherapy. Among ctDNA-positive patients, those who received adjuvant atezolizumab demonstrated improved progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) compared with placebo (median OS, 32 vs 24 months). Patients with persistently negative ctDNA results had 1-year disease-free survival (DFS) of 95% and 2-year DFS of 88%.
Perioperative durvalumab showed an improvement of 2-year OS of 82.2 vs 75.2%, 2-year PFS was improved 67.8 vs 59.8%. There was interestingly no difference in the rates of grade 3-4 toxicity in the SOC vs periop-IO group. This is likely going to become the SOC in resectable bladder cancer.