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Adjuvant Treatment: Old and New Immunotherapy in Non-Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer

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Book cover Treating Urothelial Bladder Cancer

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Abstract

Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) is the first connection between bladder cancer and immunotherapy and still represents the gold standard treatment for intermediate and high-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). However, the use of intravesical BCG alone in high-risk NMIBC patients seems to be insufficient, as showed by the relative high numbers of “BCG failure” patients. Since BCG induces infiltration of the bladder wall by neutrophils, which play an important role in the antitumor effect of BCG itself, and the release of IL-15, which plays a crucial role in neutrophil activation and migration, the use of recombinant BCG strain expressing some interleukins has been proposed, with interesting results. Gene therapy is a promising and attractive strategy for cancer biotherapy and some authors have already pointed out the potential antitumor effect exerted by the intravesical application of oncoviruses. Gene therapy and anticancer vaccines represent probably the greatest challenges in bladder cancer research, but their clinical application remains, to date, very far away.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Urology, Fundació Puigvert, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

    J. Palou & F. Pisano

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  1. J. Palou
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  2. F. Pisano
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Correspondence to J. Palou .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Turin, Torino, Italy

    Francesco Soria

  2. University of Turin, Torino, Italy

    Paolo Gontero

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Palou, J., Pisano, F. (2018). Adjuvant Treatment: Old and New Immunotherapy in Non-Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer. In: Soria, F., Gontero, P. (eds) Treating Urothelial Bladder Cancer . Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78559-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78559-2_6

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-78558-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-78559-2

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