When patients with bladder cancer complete treatment that is intended to cure the cancer, they may be left wondering if there is anything else they should do to keep the cancer from coming back. For patients with muscle invasive bladder cancer – where the disease is at a higher risk of coming back than early-stage … Read more
While men are four times more likely to develop bladder cancer as they age, women and African Americans are more likely to be diagnosed with the disease at a later stage, when treatment is less likely to be curative. The key to an early diagnosis is a timely visit to a urologist, a specialist who … Read more
Bladder cancer treatment is advancing, with several approved immunotherapy options, an approved gene therapy, and an approach to cell therapy planned for testing in clinical trials at Dana-Farber. What is bladder cancer? The most common form of bladder cancer is urothelial carcinoma, in which the urothelial cells that line the bladder and urinary tract begin … Read more
Discovering new cancer treatment can sometimes be a matter of connecting the dots between new pathways and old drugs. That was the case in a new paper in the TKTK issue of Clinical Cancer Research co-authored by Kent Mouw MD, PhD, co-director of Dana-Farber’s Bladder Cancer Center. Mouw and his team found a promising way … Read more
A woman recently came to Bradley McGregor, MD, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, in severe pain with extreme fatigue. Her squamous cell bladder cancer, a rare type for which traditional treatment is generally less effective, had advanced, and it appeared that she had no other options. But timing is everything. McGregor was conducting a … Read more
Husband and wife Ken Deutsch and Amy Green like to say they’re now “chasing the tail” of the bell curve. They have each had to grapple with cancer, as well as multiple setbacks and even recurrences. However, thanks to the care they’ve received at Dana-Farber — along with the support they’ve had from each other … Read more
Urinary problems are more common among older adults, when incontinence and urinary-tract infections become more prevalent and bladder cancer risk rises. About 9 out of 10 bladder cancer patients are above the age of 55, according to the American Cancer Society. The symptoms of bladder cancer can mirror those of other conditions, so it’s important … Read more
The past two years have seen striking changes in how advanced bladder cancer is treated.
In 1947, when Dana-Farber Cancer Institute founder Sidney Farber, MD, set out to find a drug treatment for childhood leukemia, cancer treatment took two forms – surgery to cut out cancerous masses, and radiation therapy to burn them out. Cancers that couldn’t be removed or irradiated – either because of their position in the body, because … Read more
Treatments that improve the immune system’s ability to recognize and kill cancer cells are known as immunotherapy. For certain patients with advanced bladder cancer, immunotherapy is proving effective, and several immunotherapy drugs are approved for use in such patients. Currently approved treatments A checkpoint inhibitor is a drug — often made of antibodies — that … Read more
Bladder cancer accounts for only five percent of new cancer cases in America — a small piece of the pie — but considering it is the fourth most common cancer in men, it is important to be aware of the signs and symptoms of this disease. Symptoms of bladder cancer The most common sign of … Read more
The immunotherapy drug pembrolizumab (Keytruda) is the first therapy of any kind to improve survival in patients whose metastatic bladder cancer worsened after treatment with platinum-based chemotherapy. Keytruda proved so much better than chemotherapy in this “second-line” use that an international clinical trial was halted when the advantage became apparent. “This is very good news; … Read more