[MUSIC PLAYING]
TIMOTHY LYON: When a bladder cancer patient is referred to Mayo Clinic, initially, they'll come here-- usually they'll have a full day of appointment with multiple different specialists, maybe some more testing, and we'll craft a treatment plan.
CARLOS VARGAS: We are specialized in bladder cancer. We know how to do it well. We get many patients with bladder cancer. So we have been able to optimize every part of the treatment.
TIMOTHY LYON: In my mind, the two most exciting advances recently have been in drug development and in genomics. We have a number of drugs in the development pipeline that patients can consider enrolling on a trial to see if that can help them manage their disease and retain their bladder.
One of the biggest is called Blue Light Cystoscopy. This is a technology that's been around for a few years. And how it works is, we instill a medication inside the bladder, about an hour before a bladder biopsy. This medication is preferentially absorbed by bladder cancer cells, but not by normal bladder. For patients that have something called carcinoma in situ, or flat cancer, using Blue Light finds about 40% more lesions and can give us better confidence that we've done the best operation for the patient, removed as much cancer as we can, and give them the best chance to do well from there.
We have been involved in multiple clinical trials across many disease states using immune therapy.
ROXANA DRONCA: So far, in the history of cancer treatment, immunotherapy drugs are the only drugs that have been found to offer patients prolonged responses, potentially complete responses, even in stage four cancer.
CARLOS VARGAS: Radiation therapy produces new epitopes, which are parts of the cell that will allow for the lymphocytes to ingest, that allow them to prompt them later to attack the cancer. The radiation therapy in combination with immunotherapy is far more effective than just giving immunotherapy on its own. It's bringing more hope to our patients, better results, and we are getting extremely good remission rates, even in cases that are very advanced.
TIMOTHY LYON: So a patient that's facing bladder removal, or radical cystectomy-- one of the treatment options we can offer here at Mayo Clinic is robotic assisted bladder removal. That's been shown in multiple clinical trials to be equally effective in terms of cancer control as a traditional open operation, but can be done through smaller incisions with less blood loss and a slightly shorter hospital stay.
We're really on the cutting edge of medical research at the forefront of new discoveries in helping manage patient's disease. So it's really critical that we have multiple specialists working together to care for a single patient, to give them the best possible treatment outcome.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
