Chronic Diseases and Translational Medicine 2019;5(3):170-177

Programmed death ligand-1/programmed death-1 inhibition therapy and programmed death ligand-1 expression in urothelial bladder carcinoma

Yu WEI-BO 1 ; Rao JIAN-YU 1

Affiliations

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Keywords

Immune checkpoint therapy; Urothelial carcinoma; Bladder cancer; Programmed death-ligand 1; Programmed death-1

Country

China

Language

English

Abstract

After two decades of unchanged paradigms, the treatment strategies for advanced urothelial bladder cancer have been revolu-tionized by emerging programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)/programmed death-1 (PD1) inhibition therapy. Increased evidence is demonstrating the efficacy of PD-L1/PD1 inhibition therapy in both second-line and first-line settings. However, the percentage of patients who benefit from anti-PD-L1/anti-PD1 therapy is still low. Many questions have been raised in the development of biomarker-driven approaches for disease classification and patient selection. In this perspective, we discuss PD-L1/PD1 expression in urothelial bladder carcinoma, review approved anti-PD-L1/anti-PD1 agents for bladder cancer treatment and current ongoing studies investi-gating combination treatment strategies, and explore PD-L1 expression status for the evaluation of bladder cancer immunotherapy.