While 5-year survival rates of renal or prostate cancer patients have enhanced remarkably in the past years, progress in bladder cancer has stalled. Bladder cancer remains a public health concern due to its prevalence, high risk of recurrence, and associated cost of management. Although Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) instillations for urothelial cancer therapy is the most successful immunotherapy on a large scale and considered as a standard treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), repeated BCG treatments are associated with significant toxicity and failure. Indeed, Thirty-to-forty percent of high risk of progression NIMBC patients, particularly those presenting with carcinoma in situ lesions, will not respond to BCG therapy and would thus greatly benefit from a more efficient therapy that could avoid radical cystectomy.
Cystectomy, possibly before or after chemotherapy, is the only treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Clinical outcomes for metastatic urothelial cancer is poor with an overall 5-year survival rate of 15%.
Overall, there is a tremendous necessity for alternative or complementary treatment for bladder cancer patients and for a better understanding of immune responses generated within bladder mucosa.
Immunotherapy has long been recognized as a promising therapy to fight cancer due to its specificity, its long-term effects towing to immunological memory and its targeting of the immune system rather than of the tumor itself. However, control of tumor growth by immunotherapy is hindered by a number of obstacles including the ability of tumors to foster a tolerant microenvironment and the activation of various immunosuppressive mechanisms that may act in concert to counteract effective immune responses.
A major paradigm shift in the clinical management of advanced bladder tumors has occurred since 2014 with the advent of immune checkpoint blockers (ICBs). A multitude of novel immunostimulatory drugs, such as bispecific T cell engagers, CAR-T cells, antibody-cytokine fusion proteins, or oncolytic viruses, are currently being tested in patients with bladder tumors. Importantly, the clinical development of some novel immunomodulatory agents is rapidly evolving at earlier tumor stages in organ-confined disease. Understanding the roles, functions, and responses of immune and non-immune cells in the bladder tumor microenvironment is therefore critical to foster the development of immuno-modulatory drugs in non-metastatic bladder tumors and may lead to promising therapeutic targets.
In this cutting-edge collection, Review and Mini-review articles will be accepted.
Our goal is to provide a discussion on the roles and functions of immune and non-immune components of the bladder tumor microenvironment. We wish to encourage discussion and cross-fertilization between scientists, and clinicians among the various roles and aspects of the bladder tumor microenvironment and its responses to immunomodulation, to further our knowledge in this field.
Please Note: Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation are considered out of scope of this section .
Topic Editor. Dr. Laurent Derré has an advisory/consulting role at Prokarium.
While 5-year survival rates of renal or prostate cancer patients have enhanced remarkably in the past years, progress in bladder cancer has stalled. Bladder cancer remains a public health concern due to its prevalence, high risk of recurrence, and associated cost of management. Although Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) instillations for urothelial cancer therapy is the most successful immunotherapy on a large scale and considered as a standard treatment for non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC), repeated BCG treatments are associated with significant toxicity and failure. Indeed, Thirty-to-forty percent of high risk of progression NIMBC patients, particularly those presenting with carcinoma in situ lesions, will not respond to BCG therapy and would thus greatly benefit from a more efficient therapy that could avoid radical cystectomy.
Cystectomy, possibly before or after chemotherapy, is the only treatment for muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Clinical outcomes for metastatic urothelial cancer is poor with an overall 5-year survival rate of 15%.
Overall, there is a tremendous necessity for alternative or complementary treatment for bladder cancer patients and for a better understanding of immune responses generated within bladder mucosa.
Immunotherapy has long been recognized as a promising therapy to fight cancer due to its specificity, its long-term effects towing to immunological memory and its targeting of the immune system rather than of the tumor itself. However, control of tumor growth by immunotherapy is hindered by a number of obstacles including the ability of tumors to foster a tolerant microenvironment and the activation of various immunosuppressive mechanisms that may act in concert to counteract effective immune responses.
A major paradigm shift in the clinical management of advanced bladder tumors has occurred since 2014 with the advent of immune checkpoint blockers (ICBs). A multitude of novel immunostimulatory drugs, such as bispecific T cell engagers, CAR-T cells, antibody-cytokine fusion proteins, or oncolytic viruses, are currently being tested in patients with bladder tumors. Importantly, the clinical development of some novel immunomodulatory agents is rapidly evolving at earlier tumor stages in organ-confined disease. Understanding the roles, functions, and responses of immune and non-immune cells in the bladder tumor microenvironment is therefore critical to foster the development of immuno-modulatory drugs in non-metastatic bladder tumors and may lead to promising therapeutic targets.
In this cutting-edge collection, Review and Mini-review articles will be accepted.
Our goal is to provide a discussion on the roles and functions of immune and non-immune components of the bladder tumor microenvironment. We wish to encourage discussion and cross-fertilization between scientists, and clinicians among the various roles and aspects of the bladder tumor microenvironment and its responses to immunomodulation, to further our knowledge in this field.
Please Note: Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation are considered out of scope of this section .
Topic Editor. Dr. Laurent Derré has an advisory/consulting role at Prokarium.