Roche's atezolizumab seen as driver of bladder cancer treatment market

Swiss pharma giant Roche’s (ROG: SIX) atezolizumab is poised to become a major bladder cancer therapy in the race for US Food & Drug Administration approval, following its promising performance in recent Phase II trials, says an analyst with research and consulting firm GlobalData.

In a potential bladder cancer breakthrough, Roche announced that atezolizumab, an anti-Programmed Death-Ligand 1 (PD-L1) therapy, met its primary endpoint of objective response rate in the  Phase II IMvigor 210 study. During the trial, patients with higher PD-L1 expression levels showed better responses to the drug.

According to Cai Xuan, GlobalData's analyst covering oncology and hematology, this observation, along with similar results for other Programmed Cell Death Protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitors in development for various cancers, opens up a market for companion biomarker tests that can be used to identify patients who would likely benefit from PD-1/PD-L1-targeted therapies.