Dr. Galsky Discusses the Rationale for the IMvigor130 Study in Bladder Cancer

Matthew Galsky, MD, professor of medicine, hematology, and medical oncology, Mount Sinai Hospital, discusses the rationale for the IMvigor130 study in metastatic bladder cancer.

The standard of care for the first-line treatment of patients with metastatic bladder cancer has been chemotherapy for the past several decades, says Galsky. Chemotherapy has a response rate of about 30% to 50% in this patient population. Only a small proportion of patients will have a durable response on cisplatin-based chemotherapy. Historically, there has been no standard of care for patients who progress after first-line chemotherapy.

Galsky says that the introduction of immune checkpoint inhibitors—and their subsequent success in later lines of therapy for bladder cancer—have raised the question of whether immunotherapy would be effective earlier in the treatment course.

The IMvigor130 trial (NCT02807636) is evaluating first-line atezolizumab (Tecentriq) with or without platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with locally advanced or metastatic bladder cancer. This phase III, randomized study is designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of atezolizumab alone or with chemotherapy.