Exciting Future Innovations in BCG treatment of bladder carcinoma

BCG treatment is a well-established modality for treating noninvasive transitional cell bladder carcinoma.

BCG is effective however a fair number of patient’s failed treatment and require other treatments including radical cystectomy.  Innovative work is being done in order to augment the efficacy of BCG therapy and to avoid disease progression to muscle invasive disease and the need for radical cystectomy.

A recent basic science study used sunitinib in combination with BCG to treat so several cell models of bladder cancer.  This study showed improved bladder cancer cell death when sunitinib is used in combination with BCG.  The synergistic effect of both medications is greater than that of BCG alone.

This provides an exciting opportunity for further investigation of using combined modality treatment of sunitinib and BCG in patients with high-risk none muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC).

References:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20884251

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