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BLADDER CANCER

PD-L1 and BCG response prediction

Nature Reviews Urology volume 17, page 8 (2020)Cite this article

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A new study shows that tumours of patients with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) who do not respond to BCG therapy have elevated programmed cell death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression that is co-localized with CD8+ cells. The data show that intrinsic resistance to BCG might be caused by pretreatment adaptive immune responses and immune exhaustion.

Failure of intravesical BCG therapy occurs in ~50% of patients, and multiple studies have been investigating possibilities to predict BCG response to enable early treatment with alternative agents. “In this study, we aimed to understand how immune checkpoint activation might mitigate BCG response and thereby affect response to immune checkpoint inhibitors in NMIBC,” explains Max Kates from The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, first author of the new paper. “We used tumour specimens before and after therapy from a large cohort of patients who underwent BCG treatment for NMIBC to understand how resistance is implicated in the mechanism of action of BCG.”

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  • Schneider, A. K. et al. The multifaceted immune regulation of bladder cancer. Nat. Rev. Urol. 16, 613–630 (2019)

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  1. Nature Reviews Urology http://www.nature.com/nrurol/

    Clemens Thoma

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  1. Clemens Thoma
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Correspondence to Clemens Thoma.

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Thoma, C. PD-L1 and BCG response prediction. Nat Rev Urol 17, 8 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41585-019-0267-2

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