Sarah Psutka
University of Washington, WA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) is a bladder cancer that has not grown into the bladder's muscle wall. It affects more than 500,000 people in the United States each year.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer
acupuncture
intravesical therapy
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2031
What they work on
- Test whether weekly in-clinic true acupuncture before intravesical therapy reduces urinary symptoms more than sham acupuncture or a waitlist control, using the EORTC QLQ-NMIBC24 questionnaire at weeks 3, 6 and 12.
- Compare the three groups on cancer-specific and general quality of life, including fatigue, pain and emotional well-being. Also compare patient-reported treatment burden, use of health care and other symptom treatments, and treatment delays or early stopping.
- Report acupuncture's safety and tolerability using CTCAE v5.0 and PRO-CTCAE, standard clinician and patient side-effect scales, in people with intermediate- or high-risk bladder cancer.
- Identify predictors and biological correlates of acupuncture response, such as baseline symptoms, treatment expectations, urine inflammation markers and machine-learning analysis of cystoscopy images.
More about the research
To keep it from coming back, patients usually receive intravesical therapy, meaning immunotherapy or chemotherapy placed directly into the bladder. Both the cancer and this treatment often cause frequent, urgent urination, bladder pain and fatigue, which lower quality of life. These side effects can also lead patients to delay or stop treatment early. No proven supportive care exists for these symptoms. Acupuncture is a safe treatment that does not use drugs. It has eased bladder symptoms in other conditions and reduced pain, nausea and fatigue in cancer care. In an earlier pilot study, this team showed that weekly acupuncture before bladder treatment was safe and feasible, with high patient satisfaction and better urinary symptoms in exploratory analyses.
Why it matters
People treated for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer often have painful, frequent urinary symptoms that lower their quality of life and can lead them to delay or stop effective therapy. If acupuncture proves helpful in this trial, the evidence could shape cancer survivorship care guidelines and support insurance coverage and policies that widen access to acupuncture in bladder cancer care.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Benedict Shek Hang Law
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, NY·Biomedical Engineering
Determine the best physicochemical properties of Bds, an improved kidney-cleared carrier peptide, including chemical groups, length and surface charge, along with infusion rate and volume, for precise drug delivery to the urinary system.
Robert Svatek
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test in a phase II double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial whether one year of eRapa, an encapsulated oral form of the mTOR inhibitor rapamycin, reduces relapse in patients newly diagnosed with non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, using standard surveillance to estimate recurrence-free survival.
Gangning Liang
University of Southern California, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether DNA methylation marker panels measured in urine sediments can detect residual tumor cells after transurethral resection of bladder tumor in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer patients.
The school
University of Washington: 81 labs on PI Pages, $1.7B a year on research, 694 research doctorates a year.
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