FDA OKs immunotherapy drugs for bladder, blood cancers

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — U.S. regulators have approved the first drug for bladder cancer that harnesses the body's immune system, the first major advance in three decades against the most common type of bladder cancer.

Tecentriq won accelerated approval Wednesday from the Food and Drug Administration for treating patients with advanced urothelial cancer after chemotherapy stops helping them — a point when most usually die within about six months.

[...] conditional approval is granted based on promising initial test results for disorders where patients have few or no options.

Tecentriq, developed by the Roche Group's Genentech unit, blocks a protein found on many tumor cells that deactivates T-cells, the key immune-system cells that hunt down and destroy cancer cells.

Both drugs are part of a promising new class of injected cancer medicines that work with the patient's own immune system, helping it find and kill tumor cells that might otherwise multiply by using mechanisms to hide from immune-system sentinels.

Most bladder cancer patients for whom chemotherapy fails die within about six months on average, according to Dr. Daniel Chen, Genentech's head of development for so-called cancer immunotherapy drugs.