Immunotherapy for Bladder Cancer: Changing the Landscape

Abstract

Systemic chemotherapy plays a central role in the management of metastatic bladder cancer. Although responses may be observed initially, overall survival with multiagent chemotherapy is still limited. No significant improvements have been made by novel cytotoxic or targeted agents in last decade. There exists an urgent need for the development of novel therapeutic agents to improve outcomes for these patients. In this paper, we review the role of immunotherapy, the programmed death 1 (PD-1) receptor and its ligands (PD-L1/2), and ongoing drug development efforts to block this pathway in bladder cancer, focusing on the currently available data from ongoing clinical trials.