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By Nancy Lapid

Dec 5 (Reuters) - Hello Health Rounds Readers! When current therapies stop working against bladder cancer, a new drug in development may someday come to the rescue. We also report on discovery of genetic cell changes found in analyses of cheek swabs that may eventually enable earlier detection of a serious pregnancy complication.

Promising therapy for treatment-resistant bladder cancer

An experimental immunotherapy drug is a potentially effective treatment for patients with bladder cancer who no longer respond to current therapies, researchers reported on Thursday at the Society of Urologic Oncology meeting in Dallas.

In a late-stage study involving 112 patients whose cancers were not responding to the Bacillus Calmette Guerin - a vaccine used for bladder cancer - nearly 75% experienced complete cancer remission upon treatment with CG Oncology’s CGON.O cretostimogene. Many of them remained cancer-free beyond two years, researchers reported.

At the start of the trial, the cancer had not invaded the muscle of the bladder wall in any of the patients. A year later, that was still true for 97%.

Most participants did not need to have their bladder surgically removed, and the treatment was well tolerated with minimal serious side effects, according to the researchers.

"These findings address a significant unmet need for bladder cancer patients and could improve their quality of life," study leader Dr. Mark Tyson of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota said in a statement.

"We now know this treatment can be both effective and safe, potentially reducing the need for bladder removal surgery and providing a much-needed alternative for patients with limited options."

Cretostimogene has received fast track and breakthrough therapy designations from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, typically awarded to therapies the agency sees as a potential major advance.

“Based upon the latest data, we are confident that cretostimogene is well positioned to address an unmet need for patients... if approved by the FDA,” CG Oncology President Ambaw Bellete said in a statement.

Cheek swabs may help predict pregnancy complication

Analysis of cheek swabs from pregnant women has revealed a potential biomarker for the dangerous pregnancy complication known as preeclampsia, researchers reported, a finding that could lead to a simple test to identify the condition earlier in pregnancy.

The condition, which can lead to preterm births, is usually not identified until the second semester, after symptoms such as abnormally high blood pressure appear. Sometimes, the condition can go undetected until it becomes an emergency.

“If we have a biomarker for the susceptibility of preeclampsia, then there are some clinical management practices in the first trimester and early second trimester that could delay a preterm birth,” study leader Michael Skinner of Washington State University said in a statement.

In preeclampsia, the mother is at risk for organ damage. There is no cure, except for delivery of the baby and the placenta.

Skinner’s team collected cheek cells from 49 women who had just given birth, including 13 who had preeclampsia and a preterm delivery.

They analyzed the cells for modifications to epigenetics, which are molecular factors and processes that determine how genes behave.

The 13 women with preeclampsia and preterm births had 389 epigenetic modifications to regions of DNA that activate or suppress various genes, according to a report in Environmental Epigenetics.

These modifications were not found in mothers without preeclampsia and had only a 15% overlap with epigenetics of other mothers who experienced preterm birth without preeclampsia.

The researchers said they hope further research will confirm that identifying these epigenetic changes in pregnant women in the first trimester will improve the management of those at risk for preeclampsia and help to delay or prevent preterm births.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid; editing by Bill Berkrot)

((Nancy.Lapid@thomsonreuters.com))