“Even after undergoing radical surgery with the goal of removing all cancerous tumors, up to half of patients with muscle-invasive bladder cancer still experience high rates of cancer recurrence,” said Dr. Andrea Apolo, principal investigator and chief of the Bladder Cancer Section, Genitourinary Malignancies Branch, National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health. “In this trial, adjuvant pembrolizumab [KEYTRUDA] reduced the risk of disease recurrence or death from any cause by 31% versus observation, demonstrating the potential of using pembrolizumab [KEYTRUDA] after surgery for high-risk patients with persistent muscle-invasive or locally advanced urothelial carcinoma who have high tumor stage, lymph node involvement or positive margins at surgery to help prevent their cancer from returning.”
