Genitourinary Cancer

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The year 2017 saw significant advancements in the field of bladder cancer treatment. Five Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvals for checkpoint inhibitors in both the first and second line setting opened up the immunotherapy landscape, and more develoments are on the way.

Cisplatin, a platinum-based chemotherapy agent that is used to treat testicular cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer, cervical cancer, ovarian cancer and head and neck cancer, has been found to cause a significant amount of hearing loss in patients, according to a recent article published in Nature Communications.

Adjuvant therapy is associated with high toxicity and most patients will derive no benefit, Umberto Capitanio, MD, San Raffaele Scientific Institute, Milan, Italy, said in a presentation during the 2017 EMUC Congress. However, adjuvant therapy “might show the highest ratio between clinical benefit and toxicity” in this specific subset of high-risk patients.

“Are there ways that we can optimize the cure rates with HIFU? When are people recurring? What are we missing when they recur? What are the true rates of complications? We do not know the answer to most of these questions,” says Jonathan Warner, MD.

FDA approval was given to a new regimen of cabazitaxel (Jevtana) to treat men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer who previously received a docetaxel-containing regimen. The approval is for 20 mg/m2 every 3 weeks in combination with prednisone. The agency approved a dose of 25 mg/m2 every 3 weeks in this patient population in 2010.

kidney cancer

Patients with untreated advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) lived significantly longer without disease progression when they received the multikinase inhibitor cabozantinib (Cabometyx) as initial therapy versus sunitinib (Sutent), according to results of an independent review of the randomized CABOSUN trial reported at the 2017 ESMO Congress in Madrid.