New treatment eliminates bladder cancer in 82% of patients

Summary

TAR-200 is a miniature, pretzel-shaped drug-device duo containing a chemotherapy drug, gemcitabine, which is inserted into the bladder through a catheter and releases the drug for three weeks per treatment cycle. How the drug delivery system works TAR-200 is a miniature, pretzel-shaped drug-device duo containing a chemotherapy drug, gemcitabine, which is inserted into the bladder through a catheter. Once inside the bladder, the TAR-200 slowly and consistently releases the gemcitabine into the organ for three weeks per treatment cycle. Traditionally, gemcitabine has been delivered to the bladder as a liquid solution that only stays in the bladder for a few hours, which had limited effect destroying the cancer, said Daneshmand, who is also a member of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center. “The theory behind this study was that the longer the medicine sits inside the bladder, the more deeply it would penetrate the bladder and the more cancer it would destroy,” he said. “And it appears that having the chemotherapy released slowly over weeks rather than in just a few hours is a much more effective approach.” The patient population in the clinical trial The clinical trial, known as the SunRISe-1, was conducted at 144 locations globally, including at Keck Hospital of USC. It included 85 patients with high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer is the most common form of bladder cancer. The disease is considered high risk when, depending on the type and location of the tumors, the cancer carries a higher chance of recurrence and/or spreading to the bladder muscles or other parts of the body. The standard treatment for this type of bladder cancer is an immunotherapy drug, Bacillus Calmette-Guérin, which may be ineffective in a percentage of patients. All the patients in the clinical trial had been previously treated with this drug, but their cancer had returned. “The standard treatment plan for these patients was surgery to remove t...