Investigators from Cedars-Sinai Cancer, working in collaboration with colleagues in Colorado and the Netherlands, have identified a specific type of bladder cancer most likely to resist first-line treatment. Their study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine, could guide clinicians toward more aggressive treatment or more targeted therapies for some patients with specific subtypes of the disease, ultimately saving lives.
Investigators used molecular profiling of non-muscle invasive bladder cancers from 132 patients who had never received BCG treatment, and 44 patients whose cancer recurred following BCG treatment. They identified three distinct subtypes among these tumors and matched them with patients’ clinical outcomes to determine whether the subtypes were linked with cancer recurrence.
One of the subtypes, which investigators call BCG Response Subtype 3 (BRS3), was associated with reduced progression-free survival—meaning less time until the cancer recurred—than the other two subtypes. And the study findings showed that BRS3 was the dominant subtype among patients whose cancer recurred after BCG therapy.
The investigators were also able to show that a commercially available test can accurately identify BRS3 tumors. A larger follow-up study is underway to further validate this finding.
