The safety and efficacy of gemcitabine for the treatment of bladder cancer

Bladder cancer is a common type of cancer with an estimated incidence of more than 70,000 patients and had a mortality of 16,000 patients in the US in 2015. In more than 70% of cases the disease is diagnosed at the non-muscle invasive stage. However, muscle invasive or metastatic stages need multimodal treatment strategies including surgical treatment and chemotherapy in a neoadjuvant, adjuvant or palliative setting. Gemcitabine is a pyrimidine antimetabolite that has shown efficacy when used systemically in bladder cancer with only mild toxicity compared to other chemotherapeutic agents. This article aims to summarize the results of clinical trials in monotherapeutic, combined or sequential treatment strategies, especially considering efficacy and safety of the different therapeutic regimes.