ImmunityBio's Anktiva helped 92.2% of evaluated patients avoid a cystectomy at 12 months post-treatment, the company reported.
Armed with new three-year data demonstrating the benefits of Anktiva in a specific patient subset, ImmunityBio is proving its bladder cancer med is still one to watch as it competes with heavy hitters from Merck and Johnson & Johnson.Last year, the company won a long-sought FDA approval for its drug—used alongside the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine—to treat patients with BCG-unresponsive non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) with carcinoma in situ (CIS), with or without papillary tumors. That nod set up a showdown with Merck’s Keytruda and Ferring Pharmaceuticals’ gene therapy Adstiladrin. More recently, the competition has amped up, with Johnson & Johnson’s Inlexzo hitting the scene and putting pressure on IL-15 receptor agonist Anktiva.Not deterred by the expanding competitive landscape, ImmunityBio is using new data from the company’s Quilt-3.032 study to flesh out Anktiva’s benefits in patients with BCG-unresponsive high-grade papillary-only NMIBC. Papillary tumors and CIS are the two clonally linked subtypes of NMIBC, ImmunityBio explained in a Dec. 16 press release. Across the 80 high-grade papillary-only NMIBC patients evaluated in cohort B of the company’s Quilt-3.032 trial, the disease-free survival (DFS) rate came out to 58.2% at one year and 38.2% by year three.Disease-specific survival (DSS) outcomes told a bit of a different story, however, with 98.7% of patients alive at one year and 96% at three years. The DSS endpoint tracks how long patients survive without dying specifically from the disease being studied. DFS, meanwhile, tracks how long patients survive without any signs or symptoms of the disease, according to the National Cancer Institute.All told, 94.9% of patients had survived without disease progression at one year, as did 83.1% of the cohort's participants at the three-year mark, according to ImmunityBio. The trial also tracked cystectomy avoidance rates, which determined that 92.2% of patients didn’t need a cystectomy at one year. At three years, the number was 81.8%. A cystectomy is a bladder removal procedure that’s typically the go-to response for bladder cancer that doesn’t respond to treatment. The results, which are published in The Journal of Urology’s January 2026 print edition, suggest a “potential paradigm change in the treatment of BCG-unresponsive high-grade papillary-only NMIBC,” ImmunityBio’s founder, chairman and global chief scientific and medical officer, Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., said in the release, adding that the 12-month and 36-month outcomes are “higher than those reported for other investigational therapies in this patient population.”“The evidence that CIS and papillary disease are clonally linked, combined with the Quilt-3.032 findings showing long-term cystectomy avoidance, sustained avoidance of progression to muscle-invasive disease, and 96% bladder cancer-specific survival at three years, supports the consideration that Anktiva plus BCG addresses the unmet need for patients with papillary disease alone who face the prospect of total radical cystectomy following failure of BCG therapy,” Soon-Shiong added.ImmunityBio’s efforts to expand into the papillary-only population have been up in the air since the FDA responded to its March bid for a papillary disease indication with a refusal-to-file letter, leaving the company “shocked” by what it described as the agency’s “inconsistent response.”Since holding a type A meeting with the FDA in June, the drugmaker has been reevaluating its approach for the filing, it said in an August earnings release. Either way, the race is on in this indication, with J&J recently reporting its own data from a cohort of its phase 2b Inlexo study. Out of 52 patients with the papillary disease subtype, J&J found a one-year DFS rate of 74.3% and progression-free survival of 95.6%, while 92.3% of patients didn’t need a radical cystectomy. After laying off workers to save costs in the wake of Anktiva’s approval last year, ImmunityBio saw strong sales growth to $31.8 million during the third quarter of this year, with Anktiva drawing “continued strong demand,” CEO Richard Adcock said. At the time, Adcock said a study of Anktiva in BCG-naïve patients was “enrolling well,” giving the company confidence in its hopes of expanding the drug’s reach to an “even broader population of bladder cancer patients in the near future.”