Dr. Sweis on Trend Toward Immunotherapy in GU Malignancies

Randy F. Sweis, MD, clinical instructor, University of Chicago Medicine, discusses the emerging field of immunotherapy to treat patients with genitourinary (GU) malignancies.

GU cancers has had an interesting course of history, Sweis explains. While bacillus Calmette-Guérin is a standard immunotherapy that has long been available for patients with bladder cancer, Sweis says there was a lull in bladder cancer for quite some time. In kidney cancer, there was drug development with tyrosine kinase inhibitors, and in prostate cancer, patients have treatment options including androgen-targeted agents. However, bladder cancer remained quiet regarding FDA-approved drugs until the May 2016 approval of the PD-L1 inhibitor atezolizumab (Tecentriq).

Now, it is an exciting time to see anti—PD-1 therapies taking off in bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma, where nivolumab (Opdivo) has also been approved as a treatment for patients.