The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) agrees to speed up the approval of Roche's Tecentriq so that it can be available as bladder cancer treatment the soonest this year.
FDA accepted the Swiss drug maker's application for approval and granted the drug priority review. Tecentriq (atezolizumab) is currently being given major attention by the drug authority so that it can start treating patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma (mUC).
Currently, urothelial carcinoma, comprises for 90 percent of all bladder cancers and can also be come up in the renal pelvis, ureter and urethra.
As a bladder cancer treatment, Tecentriq works by mimicking the mechanism of antibodies. It is designed to bind with cancer proteins expressed on tumor cells and tumor-infiltrating immune cells. It further blocks cancer interactions, the businesswire reports.
According to its developers, Tecentriq may also enable the activation of T cells which attacks cancerous cells.
According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), they have estimated that more than 79,000 Americans will be diagnosed with bladder cancer in 2017.
Unfortunately, as it is in most cancer cases, about 11 percent of new diagnoses are made when the cancer is in advanced stages.
There is a huge difference in survival rates between early and advanced bladder cancer. Approximately 96 percent of the patients will have extended lives for about five or more years when diagnosed with the earliest stage of the disease.
Only 39 percent is the survival rate when diagnosed in advanced stages (stage III-IV) of the disease.
Tecentriq was approved last year for another group of patients with locally advanced or metastatic urothelial carcinoma as well as non-small cell lung cancer, the most-common form of lung cancer, the Reuters says.
Advanced researches and public interest have generated waves of cancer cure as reported earlier. Making sure that medicine such as bladder cancer treatment gets to the patients is the main priority.
