Emerging Immunotargets in Bladder Cancer

Abstract

Bladder cancer treatment, namely systemic therapy, was dominated in the last three decades due to the absence of newer therapeutic options other than chemotherapy regimens. Chemotherapy, by itself, both in first and second-line seems to have achieved the modest plateau of its possibilities at the cost of non-negligible toxicity. Targeted therapies, which changed the therapy of many different tumors, seem rather ineffective in bladder cancer. More recently, a new generation of Immunotherapy based regimens represent the most promising avenue for the future systemic treatment of bladder cancer. Checkpoint inhibition, namely PD1/PD-L1 pathway inhibition, showed impressive results in many other tumor types and are expected to become a major player in the treatment of bladder cancer. Other immunotherapy strategies such as fusion proteins represent distant, although promising, options. A brief overview of the current status of bladder cancer immunotherapy is presented.