Bacterium-Derived Therapy Effective for Bladder Cancer

At the Annual Meeting of the Society of Urologic Oncology, Protara Therapeutics announced that TARA-002 showed high response rates in patients with non–muscle invasive bladder cancer who do not respond to, or have not been treated with, Bacillus Calmette-Guerin therapy, which is part of the current standard treatment for this cancer. TARA-002 contains an inactivated form of the Streptococcus pyogenes bacterium suspected to activate immune cells that elicit an inflammatory response lethal to tumor cells. In the phase II ADVANCED-2 study, 13 of 18 patients (72%) maintained a complete response (CR) at 6 months, while 100% of patients maintained a CR from 3 to 6 months.