New immunotherapy treatments in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer

Non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) is a highly heterogeneous disease that hides classes of patients who behave significantly differently under a favorable overall prognosis facade. Individual risk stratification and good decision making improve the patient outcomes. To date, radical cystectomy remains the treatment of choice in particularly aggressive subsets of disease, also due to the lack of proven alternative bladder-sparing strategies.Cancer immunotherapy, by inhibiting the PD-1/PD-L1axis, has shown durable efficacy in the treatment of advanced and metastatic unresectable urothelial carcinoma, and is studied with great interest in early disease settings. The updated data of the KEYNOTE-057 study have recently promoted the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of pembrolizumabin patients with CIS-containing BCG-unresponsive NMIBC. This significant step forward paves the way to a new window of therapeutic opportunities, while underlining new needs and questions to be addressed.