Urinary Bladder Tumor clinical trials at UCSF

This study will test an experimental drug (enfortumab vedotin) alone and with different combinations of anticancer therapies. Pembrolizumab is an immune checkpoint inhibitor (CPI) that is used to treat patients with cancer of the urinary system (urothelial cancer). This type of cancer includes cancer of the bladder, renal pelvis, ureter or urethra. Some parts of the study will look at locally advanced or metastatic urothelial cancer (la/mUC), which means the cancer has spread to nearby tissues or to other areas of the body. Other parts of the study will look at muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), which is cancer at an earlier stage that has spread into the muscle wall of the bladder. This study will look at the side effects of enfortumab vedotin alone and with other anticancer therapies. A side effect is a response to a drug that is not part of the treatment effect. This study will also test if the cancer shrinks with the different treatment combinations.

This phase Ib/II trial studies the side effects, best dose, and effectiveness of enfortumab vedotin (EV) in combination with pembrolizumab and radiation therapy for treating patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer. Standard of care treatment for muscle invasive bladder cancer is chemotherapy, to shrink the tumor before the main treatment is given (neoadjuvant), followed by surgery to remove all of the bladder as well as nearby tissues and organs (radical cystectomy). In cases where patients are not candidates for the standard of care approach or prefer a bladder sparing option, tri-modality therapy with transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) followed by combined chemotherapy and radiation therapy is used. Enfortumab vedotin is a monoclonal antibody, enfortumab, linked to an anticancer drug called vedotin. It works by helping the immune system to slow or stop the growth of tumor cells. Enfortumab attaches to a protein called nectin-4 on tumor cells in a targeted way and delivers vedotin to kill them. It is a type of antibody-drug conjugate. Immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies, such as pembrolizumab, may help the body's immune system attack the cancer, and may interfere with the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Intensity-modulated radiation therapy is a type of 3-dimensional radiation therapy that uses computer-generated images to show the size and shape of the tumor. Thin beams of radiation of different intensities are aimed at the tumor from many angles. This type of radiation therapy reduces the damage to healthy tissue near the tumor. Giving enfortumab vedotin with pembrolizumab and radiation therapy may work better in treating patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer.

The purpose of this study is to assess the antitumor efficacy and safety of perioperative enfortumab vedotin (EV) plus pembrolizumab and radical cystectomy (RC) + pelvic lymph node dissection (PLND) compared with the current standard of care (neoadjuvant chemotherapy [gemcitabine plus cisplatin] and RC + PLND) for participants with MIBC who are cisplatin-eligible. The primary hypothesis is perioperative EV and pembrolizumab and RC + PLND (Arm A) will achieve superior event free survival (EFS) compared with neoadjuvant gemcitabine + cisplatin and RC + PLND (Arm B).

Voided urinary cytology (VUC) is the most widely used urine-based assay for detecting bladder cancer (BCa); however, it fails to detect approximately 50% of low-grade or early stage BCa when it is most curable. Furthermore, the detection rate of VUC for recurrent BCa is not much better. Because of this severe limitation, all patients who are under surveillance to monitor for recurrent BCa must undergo an invasive examination of the urinary bladder, where a miniature camera is inserted into the bladder and the bladder inspected (cystoscopy). We propose to improve the non-invasive detection of recurrent BCa by further validating a multiplex ELISA assay directed at a BCa-associated diagnostic signature in voided urine samples.