Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, Says Maintenance Immunotherapy Has Become Standard Practice in Bladder Cancer

CancerNetwork® spoke with Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, professor of medicine (medical oncology) and of urology and co-leader of Cancer Signaling Networks at Yale Cancer Center, about using maintenance immunotherapy as a standard of care for patients with bladder cancer. He spoke on the topic at the 15th Annual Interdisciplinary Prostate Cancer Congress® and Other Genitourinary Malignancies, hosted by Physicians’ Education Resource®, LLC (PER®), for which he served as meeting co-chair.

Transcript:

Immunotherapy is now considered standard of care for patients who respond to frontline chemotherapy for metastatic urothelial carcinoma. By respond, I define that as stable, complete, or partial response to chemotherapy, which could be either cisplatin and gemcitabine, carboplatin and gemcitabine, or the MVAC regimen [which includes methotrexate, vinblastine sulfate, doxorubicin hydrochloride, and cisplatin]. There’s a significant improvement in survival in those patients who receive maintenance of avelumab [Bavencio] compared with those who receive just best standard of care in that setting. We view that as standard treatment for these patients.