Bavencio Has Efficacy in The Real-World Treatment of Urothelial Cancer

For patients with urothelial cancer, a real-world study showed that maintenance therapy with Bavencio (avelumab) was shown to be both effective and tolerable, according to Dr. Rober Jones.

“Most patients maintain a pretty good quality of life whilst on that treatment,” Jones, a professor of Clinical Cancer Research at The University of Glasgow School of Cancer Sciences, in Scotland, said in an interview with CURE®. “All drugs have side effects, but most people on immunotherapy have minimal side effects, minimal enough that it won't really interfere with their day-to-day activities.”

Jones spoke with CURE while attending the 2025 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, where he was presenting data from the real-world study (research conducted outside of a clinical trial setting).

Jones and his colleagues shared that on average, after starting Bavencio, patients lived for 17 months and their cancer remained stable for nine months. In the interview, he spoke with CURE about patients’ experiences of being treated with Bavencio.

Transcript:

The first thing I always tell my patients is that [Bavencio] is very different from the chemotherapy you've had; it's not the same thing. It may be given in a similar way, but it's a different experience being on chemotherapy and being on immunotherapy. It's not that different from any other PD-1, PD-L1-targeted immune checkpoint inhibitor, and that, of course, means that most patients actually maintain a pretty good quality of life whilst on that treatment. All drugs have side effects, but most people on immunotherapy have minimal side effects, minimal enough that it won't really interfere with their day-to-day activities. But of course, there is a significant minority who can get severe and, of course, sometimes fatal toxicity with immunotherapy. For most patients, it presents good value, and that's most of my patients' experience of it.

Of course, those patients who do get severe toxicity, then that can be life-changing toxicity. There is a significant inconvenience factor, this drug's given as a biweekly infusion. We can't get away from this. It's once a fortnight hospital attendance, and some of these patients have been on it now for years. [In fact,] 28% of the patients in our study were on it for two years. We stopped at two and some [were] beyond two years, so that's a lot of hospital visits.

However, I've only had one patient who's actually refused the treatment on the basis that they didn't want to make the hospital attendances. However, I think it does have implications, particularly for patients who live remotely and patients who have difficulty with travel, for example. And of course, our study doesn't really tease that out.

Transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Reference

Avelumab first-line maintenance therapy in advanced urothelial carcinoma: final analysis from s real-world study in the U.K., By Robert Jones et al., presented at the 2025 ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium, Feb. 13 to 15, San Francisco, California, abstract 723.

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