Michiel Van der Heijden
Systemic Therapy for bladder cancer
Platinum-based chemotherapy is the main systemic treatment for advanced bladder cancer patients. Immunotherapy has shown to be active in a subset of patients. We aim to advance the development of a personalized approach to bladder cancer by exploring and targeting the tumor-immune microenvironment and finding biomarkers that can guide systemic therapy.
Our key focus is on the neoadjuvant setting, as the highest gains in cure rates can be achieved here. Through the large number of bladder cancer patients, excellent multidisciplinary collaboration and broad availability of clinical trials with novel therapeutics at the NKI/AVL, discoveries can rapidly be translated into clinical trials.