Dr. Sonpavde on Novel Prognostic Marker for Atezolizumab in Bladder Cancer

Guru Sonpavde, MD, director of Bladder Cancer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, discusses a novel prognostic marker for patients with advanced bladder cancer being treated with the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq).

There is now an earlier prognostic model for overall survival, which is now proposed for patients who have undergone treatment with atezolizumab in the post-platinum setting. Multiple PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitors are approved in the post-platinum setting of bladder cancer, and these immunotherapy agents have shown superior benefit to chemotherapy in many of these patients, says Sonpavde.

Investigators found 6 prognostic factors in this setting—ECOG performance status (HR, 1.64; 95% CI, 1.20-2.24; P = .002), liver metastasis (HR, 1.45; 95% CI, 1.08-1.94; P = .014), elevated blood platelet count (HR, 1.73; 95% CI, 1.14-2.61; P = .010), increased neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio (HR, 1.84; 95% CI, 1.45-2.34; P <.001), elevated lactate dehydrogenase level (HR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.19-1.99; P = <.001), and anemia (HR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.17-2.21; P =.004). It was determined that patient survival was associated with a patient’s total number of prognostic factors.