Bladder Cancer: From the Editor

01 February 2024

“Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.” – Marie Curie

As we embark on 2024, we continue to see an explosion of research and clinical trials in bladder cancer. Every FDA approval is the fruit of thousands of hours of dedicated work by investigators, patients, research, and clinical teams. However, regulatory approval is only the first step in linking patients with new therapies. Without effective dissemination of knowledge and guidance, many patients will not receive evidence-based treatments and indeed may not even know their treatment options.

14 July 2023

Bladder cancer can be seen as a chronic condition—patients with nonmetastatic disease can live years, even decades, after diagnosis, and they often die of unrelated causes.¹ This chronicity intensifies the impacts of initial management: Clinical decisions made in the first weeks or months of the patient’s journey exert a domino effect that spans the entire disease trajectory. Early detection and appropriate initial management significantly improve patient outcomes and quality of life, while delayed detection and excessive or inappropriate treatment lead to needless suffering and financial toxicity.

15 August 2022

Urothelial carcinoma remains one of the most common malignancies, with about 81,000 new diagnoses and approximately 17,000 associated deaths in 2022 alone.¹ Survival numbers are dependent on early diagnosis and drop with delayed diagnosis and/or advanced stages of disease.¹ Both muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) and non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) are associated with substantial morbidity and reduced quality of life.^2,3

03 February 2021

Bladder cancer continues to afflict more than 80,000 patients in the United States and at least 550,000 persons globally.^1,2 Although the scientific community could not meet in person last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this did not stop the ongoing exchange of ideas, research, and clinical trials. In this article, I highlight some of the most important advances in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) and the key data to anticipate in 2021.

23 May 2019

In 2019, more than 80,000 Americans will be diagnosed with bladder cancer, and more than 17,000 patients will die from it.¹ Whether it’s the neighbor we greet each morning, the aunt we joke with at family reunions, or even the face we see each day in the mirror, bladder cancer affects us all. It is a complex, challenging disease, and its prognosis has improved only recently after three decades of relative stagnancy.

11 June 2017

It is with great pleasure that I welcome you to the Center of Excellence on Bladder Cancer. “The time is now”. This is an often used phrase in literature, often enough to be considered a cliché. Yet it is exactly this term which applies to the field of bladder cancer research today.

After decades of relative stagnation our field is moving at a dizzying pace toward meaningful improvements in patient care for those suffering from this disease. From better understanding of variant histology, knowledge of the genetic profile of tumors, identification of key signaling pathways, advances in immunotherapy, the adoption of enhanced recover pathways, and more, we now have the tools to make truly meaningful improvements in our patients’ outcomes.