“The immune system is actually our most powerful weapon against cancer,” says Dr. Arjun Balar, director of the genitourinary medical oncology program at NYU’s Perlmutter Cancer Center. When it comes to bladder cancer, immunotherapy is really important, because 60-70% of people diagnosed with advanced bladder cancer are not eligible for the most effective and aggressive chemotherapy options, according to Dr. Balar.
“For those patients, we really didn’t have, until recently, very good and effective treatment options,” Dr. Balar says. Immunotherapy has changed that. Drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors were developed to help the immune system target a protein called PD-1. When PD-1 in blocked by these inhibitors, the immune system can get to work fighting off cancer cells. In the past few years alone, five different PD-1 inhibitors have been approved by the FDA for use against bladder cancer.
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