Autologous Immunotherapy as a Novel Treatment for Bladder Cancer

Cancer is fundamentally a disease with failure in regulation in tissue growth and the risk of developing cancer increases with age. The armamentarium in treating cancer is mainly threefold: surgical resection of the tumor, radiation therapy and cytotoxic drugs. For blad‐ der cancer, results from contemporary radical cystectomy series with pelvic lymph node dis‐ section for T2-4 NX M0 transitional cell carcinoma (TCC) provides accurate pathologic staging of the primary tumor and lymph nodes, and due to increasing expertise with the dif‐ ferent types of urinary diversions durable preservation of quality of life. However, the 5year survival rate for all patients with pT2 tumors is approximately 50 – 80%, and for those with negative lymph nodes 64 – 86% (Stein, Lieskovsky et al. 2001) (Shariat, Karakiewicz et al. 2006) (Hautmann, de Petriconi et al.). In contrast, the 5-year survival rates for locally ad‐ vanced cancers, pT3 and pT4, in contemporary cystectomy series range from 22 – 58%. The presence of pathologically proven lymph node metastases at radical cystectomy is associat‐ ed with a poor outcome with a 5-year survival of 30%.