Precise Neoadjuvant Chemoresection of Low Grade NMIBC — POLO  

Bladder Cancer Clinical Trial

Official title: Precise Neoadjuvant Chemoresection of Low Grade NMIBC Guided by Drug Screens in Patient Derived Organoidst: A Single Center, Open-label, Phase II Trial

Status Not yet recruiting

Clinical Trial Summary

Based on the unmet clinical need to reduce invasiveness of treatment of low grade NMIBC, the investigators conduct this prospective, open label, single arm and single center phase II trial. The investigators aim to use drug screens in PDOs to guide neoadjuvant intravesical instillation therapy with either Epirubicin, Mitomycin C, Gemcitabine or Docetaxel to achieve chemoresection NMIBC.

Clinical Trial Description

Bladder cancer is a disease of the elderly patient and related to several interventions and operations. Patients with a low risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) are treated by transurethral resection of the bladder tumor (TURBT). Due to the high recurrence rate of approximately 50% within 2 years of diagnosis, patients are followed in outpatient clinic by cystoscopy for at least 5 years.

Beside recurrence of low grade NMIBC to low grade disease, progression to higher grade or stage is infrequent to rare. Therefore, expectant management and actives surveillance seems to be an option for selected patients that are unfit for surgery. Moreover, intravesical chemoresection has been attempted in order to avoid surgery. However, all patients were treated with the same chemotherapeutic agent and anticipated response rates were missed.

At least four different drugs have been used in daily routine and/or clinical trials for instillation therapies in NMIBC. Namely, Epirubicin, Mitomycin C, Gemcitabine and Docetaxel have been investigated and administered.

The molecular landscape of NMIBC is heterogeneous. Not only the mutational pattern but also the transcriptomic characteristics vary between different NMIBC. Although different agents are used on a routine daily bases and in clinical trials, they have not been administered based on the molecular landscape or biological likelihood of response.

The investigators recently developed a pipeline for the generation of patient derived organoids (PDO) in NMIBC. In brief: The bladder cancer is sampled during TURBT. Generation of organoids has been carefully optimized in order to yield high viability from each sample. Beside confirmation of similarities of the molecular landscape between parental NMIBC and subsequent PDO (in approx. 30 samples), the investigators established a standardized protocol to perform drug screens on these PDOs.

In this trial (POLO Trial) the investigators aim to generate PDOs from bladder cancer biopsies that are harvested in the outpatient clinic. Subsequent drug screen in PDOs for Epirubicin, Mitomycin C, Gemcitabine and Docetaxel will identify the most effective agent in this given patient. Prior TURBT, patient will receive 6 intravesical instillations with the identified agent as neoadjuvant treatment in order to perform chemoresection of the tumor. Three months after initial diagnosis, TURBT will be performed as the standard treatment and to confirm response rate of precise chemoresection. ;

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Bladder Cancer
• Non-muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer
• Urinary Bladder Neoplasms

• NCT number: NCT06227065
• Study type: Interventional
• Source: University of Bern
• Contact: Roland Seiler, Prof.
• Phone: +41 32 324 32 06
• Email: urologie@szb-chb.ch
• Status: Not yet recruiting
• Phase: Phase 2
• Start date: October 2024
• Completion date: October 2029