Inventors Develop Novel Technique To Help Customize, Enhance The Effectiveness Of Bladder Cancer Treatment

Main Category: Cancer / Oncology
Also Included In: Urology / Nephrology
Article Date: 16 May 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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Researchers in the University of Virginia Department of Urology have developed a novel method that could help physicians determine the best course of treatment for patients suffering from bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer is typically treated by neoadjuvant chemotherapy, a treatment in which chemotherapy is administered to reduce the size of the cancer prior to surgery, with the two most commonly used chemotherapeutic regimens being M-VAC (methotrexate, vinblastine, adriamycin and cisplatin) and GemCis (gemcitabine and cisplatin). While M-VAC has long been considered the more potent regimen and is often offered as the gold standard for treatment, it is quite toxic and known to successfully treat only about 25 percent of patients who receive it. Recent studies in metastatic cancer suggest that GemCis is equally potent and may be better tolerated among patients; thus, it is commonly used in the neoadjuvant setting.

Dan Theodorescu, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues have discovered biomarkers whose expression in patients' urine could accurately predict whether or not a patient is likely to respond to M-VAC treatment. The biomarkers may also predict the likelihood of a successful outcome using the GemCis treatment. This novel, bioinformatics approach to predicting the success of a particular treatment over other regimens could lead to customized, more-effective treatment for bladder cancer patients.

"This is a promising, inexpensive and minimally invasive potential approach to evaluate patients prior to neoadjuvant chemotherapy," said Theodorescu, professor of urology and molecular physiology and director of the Paul Mellon Urologic Cancer Institute at U.Va.

The U.Va. Patent Foundation has filed a patent application on the use of these biomarkers as a diagnostic tool and is currently seeking an industrial partner to further develop and commercialize the discovery. The biomarkers can easily be evaluated by ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) testing or similar technology in the urine.

"This exciting new tool could enable physicians to determine not only whether to proceed with treatment for bladder cancer, but also which treatment would be effective, on a case-by-case basis," said Mikael C. Herlevsen, Ph.D., licensing associate at the U.Va. Patent Foundation. "This innovative technology shows a great deal of promise and could have a real impact on patients' lives."

The National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health estimates more than 70,000 men and women throughout the U.S. will be newly diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2009

About the University of Virginia Patent Foundation

The University of Virginia Patent Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation that serves to bring U.Va. technologies to the global marketplace by evaluating, protecting and licensing intellectual property generated in the course of research at U.Va. The Patent Foundation reviews and evaluates nearly 200 inventions per year and has generated approximately $85 million in licensing revenue since its formation in 1978.

Source: University of Virginia