Erdafitinib Effective Treatment of Advanced Bladder Cancer

Release Date: 23-Sep-2019

Erdafitinib is a drug belonging to the class of fibroblast growth factor receptor (FGFR) inhibition, shows promising action against the advanced urothelial carcinoma with alteration in the FGFR3 gene. This drug is available in the market under the brand name of Balversa and Janssen etc. It gives about 40% overall response rate (ORR), during phase II of clinical Trial.

The trail involves about 99 patients with locally advanced and unresectable or metastatic urothelial carcinoma who had disease progression on or after at least one course of chemotherapy, or within 12 months after neoadjuvant/adjuvant therapy. The selection of the patient is done by international group of investigators. A treatment with 8 or 9 mg of erdafitinib is given to the patients, depending on their phosphate level, until their disease progressed or they experienced unacceptable adverse events (AEs).

From the total of 40% overall response ratem, about 3% shows complete response (CR) rate and about 37% shows partial response (PR) rate. There are 22 patients in which the immunotherapy got failed. From these 22 patients, about 59% had a CR or PR. At a median follow-up of 11.2 months, the median duration of progression-free survival was 5.5 months (95% CI, 4.2-6 months). At a median follow-up of 11 months, the median duration of overall survival was 13.8 months (95% CI, 9.8 months to not reach).

According to the lead investigator Arlene Siefker-Radtke, MD, a professor of genitourinary medical oncology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, in Houston, Not only erdafitinib work well in patients with lymph node metastases, but also in patients with high volume and very aggressive disease.

He also added, It was notable that we observed objective responses even in patients with visceral metastases and in a group of patients who were heavily pretreated with poor kidney function,” who typically have a “very poor prognosis. All patients in the study reported AEs due to the erdafitinib treatment, with 21% discontinuing therapy due to AEs and 67% reporting grade 3 or 4 AEs.