Impressive response rates and complete response in this setting, with moderate toxicities. Randomized trial is necessary to document survival, PFS differences. Cost will be very considerable in the setting value-based strategies. The clinical benefit must be quite superior in a randomized setting.
Cisplatin-based combination chemotherapy remains the standard of care for locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer (la/mUC); however, toxicity is substantial, responses are rarely durable, and many la/mUC patients are ineligible. Enfortumab vedotin and pembrolizumab have each shown a survival benefit versus chemotherapy in UC, are not restricted by cisplatin eligibility, and warrant investigation as a first-line (1L) combination therapy in patients ineligible for cisplatin.
In this ongoing Phase 1b/2, multicenter, open-label study, 1L cisplatin-ineligible patients with la/mUC received enfortumab vedotin 1.25 mg/kg (Days 1 and 8) and pembrolizumab 200 mg (Day 1) intravenously in 3-week cycles. The primary endpoint was safety. Key secondary endpoints included confirmed objective response rate (ORR), duration of response (DOR), and overall survival (OS).
Forty-five patients received enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab. The most common treatment-related adverse events (TRAEs) were peripheral sensory neuropathy (55.6%), fatigue (51.1%), and alopecia (48.9%). Twenty-nine patients (64.4%) had grade 3 or higher TRAEs; the most common were increased lipase (17.8%), maculopapular rash (11.1%), and fatigue (11.1%). One death (2.2%) was classified as a TRAE. Confirmed ORR after a median of 9 cycles was 73.3% with a 15.6% complete response rate. Median DOR and median OS were 25.6 months and 26.1 months, respectively.
Enfortumab vedotin plus pembrolizumab showed a manageable safety profile. Most patients experienced tumor shrinkage. The median DOR and median OS exceeding 2 years in a cisplatin-ineligible patient population make this a promising combination currently under investigation in a Phase 3 study (NCT04223856).
Small testing size, but still with high overall response rate (32%) with progression-free survival of 5.6 months. Now, this is not randomized and is after failure of check point inhibitors. Of note this medication will not be marketed for second line therapy since it did not show overall survival advantage.
Both medications are approved as a single agent in second-filine therapy, and now the combination seems to be promising with manageable toxicity. Overall Response Rate (ORR): 41% I think we need phase 3 data to show superiority over single agent therapy. And now with pembrolizumab used in first-line therapy, this regimen may disappear.
This antibody doublet is essentially the new SOC in met-urothelial cancer. The anti-PD1 and ADC combination is compelling in many ways and the survival outcomes compared to chemo were very significant. This combination is on NCCN, as well.
This is a negative study looking at atezolizumab + chemo vs. chemo alone in metastatic urothelial carcinoma. In the same issue, there is a negative study on atezolizumab vs. chemo alone, as well. It does seem that atezolizumab has limited disease activity versus some comparable agents.
Erdafatinib was compared to chemo in the >=2nd line in patients who had FGFR2/3 mutations, fusions or alterations with metastatic bladder cancer. Survival endpoints were superior in the targeted group with a overall survival of 12 vs. eight months. In my experience, the challenge with this group of targeted agents is tolerability.
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