Nivolumab significantly improves disease-free survival in muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma
Nivolumab (Opdivo; Bristol Myers Squibb) significantly improved disease-free survival (DFS) in patients with surgically resected, high-risk muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma and in the subgroup of patients whose tumors express PD-L1 ≥1%, according to a press release.
In the Phase 3 randomized, double-blind, multi-center CheckMate -274 trial, 709 patients with muscle-invasive urothelial cancer at a high risk of recurrence after radical surgery were randomly assigned to receive nivolumab (240 mg every 2 weeks) or placebo.
Patients treated with nivolumab had a median DFS of 21 months compared to 10.9 months in patients treated with placebo. In patients whose tumors express PD-L1 ≥1%, the risk of disease recurrence or death was reduced by 47% in patients receiving nivolumab.
“People with muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma often undergo major surgery to remove their bladders as a life-saving measure, but still face a probability of about 50 percent that their cancer will recur,” said Dean Bajorin, MD, genitourinary oncologist, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in a press release. “In the CheckMate -274 trial, patients who received nivolumab lived almost twice as long without their disease recurring compared to those treated with placebo. These clinically meaningful results have the potential to change the way physicians treat muscle-invasive urothelial carcinoma, helping address the pressing unmet need for efficacious, tolerable therapies following surgery.”
Read the full press release here.
