Bladder Cancer Research
Bladder Cancer Research And Clinical Trials
At City of Hope, bladder cancer clinicians and researchers collaborate extensively to develop and evaluate new therapies for better survival and quality-of-life outcomes. Our patients have access to a wide variety of clinical trials including new chemotherapy and targeted therapies, hormone therapies with fewer side effects, novel surgical techniques, innovative radiation approaches and new prevention strategies.
These trials give current patients access to promising, leading-edge therapies and improve overall care for future patients worldwide. Visit our bladder cancer clinical trials page to learn more about current studies and their eligibility criteria.
Some of our current research projects include:
- Surgical and reconstruction techniques that can improve clinical and quality-of-life outcomes
- Enhancing urinary diversion follow-up protocols to expedite recovery and minimize complication risk
- Studying a class of drugs called PD-1 inhibitors, which shuts down the cancer’s ability to evade the immune system, and their effectiveness against bladder cancers
- Gene therapies that can overcome bladder cancer’s resistance mechanisms, making it more sensitive to other treatments
- Using neural stem cells, which gravitate toward bladder cancer cells, to deliver gold nanorods to tumor sites; when an infrared light is shone on those rods, the gold particles heat up and destroy the surrounding cancer cells with intense heat
- Evaluating targeted therapies that can selectively attack bladder cancer cells, increasing its effectiveness while reducing side effects
- Looking into administering drugs prior to bladder cancer surgery, which may be able to shrink tumors enough to avoid a more invasive procedure
- Molecular profiling that guide physicians toward better treatments or avoid unnecessary therapies
- Studying the bladder tumor’s microenvironment to determine how likely it is to metastasize, and determining which patients would require more aggressive treatments