Bladder Cancer Vaccines March 2023

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Staff
Last reviewed
March 20, 2023
Content Overview
Bladder cancer can be treated and potentially prevented by BCG vaccination in 2023.

Bladder Cancer Vaccine March 2023

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Canadia, and the United Kingdom NHS say bacille Calmette-Guerin  (BCG) vaccination has shown positive results against types of bladder cancer, such as nonmuscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC). In the 1970s, the BCG vaccine was approved as an immunotherapeutic treatment for bladder cancer patients. Since then, BCG has been the standard therapy for treating high-risk NMIBC patients to avoid the recurrence and progression of the disease.

With intravesical therapy for Bladder Cancer, a liquid drug (BCG) is inserted into your bladder through a tube (urinary catheter rather than giving it by mouth or injecting it into your blood, says Cancer.org. Drugs administered directly into the bladder affect the cells lining the inside of the bladder and have little to no effect on cells elsewhere. This means that any cancer cells outside of the bladder lining, including those that have grown deeply into the bladder wall, aren’t treated by intravesical therapy.

An abstract presented at the European Association of Urology 2022 Annual Meeting reported BCG vaccination nearly halved the risk of progression among patients with NMIBC compared with transurethral resection of the bladder, but only among those at high-risk.

Bladder Cancer Vaccine Candidates March 2023

ImmunityBio's Anktiva™ N-803 Plus BCG vaccine is a therapy to treat adults with NMIBC carcinoma in situ with or without Ta/T1 papillary disease.

Bladder Cancer Vaccine Availability

Manufacturing changes in the production of BCG vaccines have resulted in worldwide shortages. BCG constraints have had a clinical impact on Bladder Cancer treatment. Because of this situation, NMIBC patients might have received fewer doses of BCG than those recommended, might have received instillations of different BCG substrains depending on the BCG availability in each region, might have received a reduced length of standard maintenance therapy, and so forth. 

Bladder Cancer Vaccine News 2023

February 17, 2023 - CNN reported: Thousands of people can't get full treatments of a lifesaving cancer drug.

February 2023 - The current BCG vaccine producer market only produces 69% of the estimated need based on the 2018 baseline volume and an assumed annual bladder cancer growth rate of 2.5%.

January 9, 2023 - N-803 Plus BCG in Patients with Bladder Cancer found effective.

September 20, 2022 - Ludwig Enterprises announced that it had started discussions regarding initiating a clinical study to evaluate the response of bladder cancer patients to BCG immunotherapy.

March 13, 2019 - Merck recognizes the impact the current availability of TICE BCG is having on patients and their caregivers and today provided an update on the company’s long-term commitment to maintain increased production of and access to TICE BCG.

September 18, 2009 - A study reported anti-tumor responses induced by recombinant BCG vaccines based on different tandem repeats of MUC1 and GM-CSF. A single dose of M. Bovis bacillus Calmette-Guérin immunotherapy has a therapeutic benefit in treating a non-invasive form of bladder cancer. It is administered intravesically, and proven benefits include the malignancy's delay and prevention of progression.