TARIS® Announces Research Collaboration Focused on Natural History of Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer Patients Not Receiving Curative Intent Therapy

LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- TARIS Biomedical LLC announced today that it has engaged in a research collaboration with Uppsala Clinical Research Center (UCR) and Prof. Per-Uno Malmström, both of Uppsala, Sweden. This collaboration will focus on better understanding the natural history and disease outcomes for patients diagnosed with Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (MIBC), through analysis of Sweden’s National Registry of Urinary Bladder Cancer (SNRUBC) and BladderBaSe disease registries. Dr. Per-Uno Malmström, professor emeritus of the Department of Surgical Sciences in Urology, will lead this effort.

MIBC is a serious and often lethal form of bladder cancer, with a propensity to rapidly progress and metastasize. Though potentially curative treatments are available, including surgery and chemoradiation, these approaches are often associated with significant morbidity. Many affected patients are unfit for or opt not to receive curative intent therapy; and a systematic understanding of disease burden, outcomes, and survival in these patients is still lacking. This research effort has the potential to raise awareness and understanding of the treatment outcomes in this important population.

“The literature indicates that approximately half of patients with MIBC do not receive treatment with curative intent for their disease,” said Dr. Christopher Cutie, M.D., MBA, Chief Medical Officer of TARIS^®. “Unfortunately, little is known about what happens to patients who do not receive these treatments. TARIS is committed to working with Professor Malmström and his colleagues at UCR to better understand the needs of this population.”

“This important research collaboration seeks to analyze the evolution of the disease including treatments received and outcomes based on a country wide longitudinal database,” said Dr. Malmström. “By identifying the major drivers that lead to a treatment decision, as well as the events that follow in the absence of curative therapy, new treatments and tools may be developed to help this underserved population.”

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common neoplasm in industrialized countries, affecting roughly 2.7 million people worldwide. In the United States, there were an estimated 79,000 new cases and nearly 17,000 deaths in 2017; in Sweden, there are nearly 3,000 new cases each year and more than 800 deaths. Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer (MIBC) accounts for 20-25% of the newly diagnosed cases. These tumors, which have progressed into the muscle of the bladder wall and potentially beyond, account for the majority of bladder-cancer-associated mortality. The standard of care for treatment of MIBC includes radical cystectomy (complete removal of the bladder), with or without neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Radical cystectomy is a major life changing surgery, and many patients are medically unfit and/or unwilling to undergo this procedure.

TARIS Biomedical^® is building a unique therapeutically-focused urology company, developing targeted new treatments for millions of patients suffering from difficult-to-treat bladder diseases. We are advancing therapies for debilitating conditions, including bladder cancer and overactive bladder, enabled by continuous local dosing where it is needed. www.tarisbiomedical.com

UCR’s mission is to improve human health in Sweden and worldwide. UCR has the competence and technology necessary to transform innovative ideas into translational research projects, clinical studies, and registry-based improvement projects. UCR is organized as an independent, non-profit research center affiliated with Uppsala University and Uppsala University Hospital.
www.ucr.uu.se

Swedish National Register of Urinary Bladder Cancer (SNRUBC) was initiated in 1997. It is a nationwide register with detailed information on 97% of bladder cancer cases in Sweden as compared with the Swedish Cancer Register. Recently the SNRUBC was linked to other national healthcare and demographic registers into the Bladder Cancer Data Base Sweden (BladderBaSe).