Dr Kitamura talks to ecancer at ESMO 2024 about data he presented from the JCOG1019 study.

This was an open-label, non-inferiority, randomised phase III study comparing the effectiveness of watchful waiting with intravesical Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) in patients with high-grade pT1 (HGT1) bladder cancer with pT0 on the second transurethral resection specimen.

Intravesical BCG is the standard of care for high-grade HGT1 bladder cancer. However, the study found that for patients with bladder cancer with HGT1 at the initial transurethral resectio and pT0 at the second transurethral resection, watchful waiting was non-inferior to BCG in terms of relapse-free survival, excluding Tis and Ta intravesical recurrences.

Furthermore the safety profile of watchful waiting was found to be better than that of BCG.

These results support watchful waiting as a new standard of care for patients with HGT1 bladder cancer and no residual tumour at the 2nd transurethral resection.