ABACUS trial: preoperative atezolizumab in urothelial carcinoma

The ABACUS trial (NCT02662309), an investigator-initiated Phase II study investigating the safety and efficacy of two cycles of neoadjuvant atezolizumab in T2-T4a transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder prior to cystectomy, has shown that PD-L1 expression plays an important role in the efficacy of this drug. Complete response rates were seen to increase to 40% in the PD-L1 positive subgroup compared to 16% in the biomarker negative population. In this interview, Thomas Powles, MBBS, MRCP, MD, from Barts Cancer Institute, London, UK, discusses these results at the American Society of Oncology (ASCO) 2018 Annual Meeting, held in Chicago, IL. The next steps in this trial will be to investigate long-term durable remission and relapse after treatment.