A cancer diagnosis presents emotional and psychological challenges for patients and caregivers, and prostate cancer has some unique challenges, in part because management is not writ in stone. At several points along the trajectory of illness, men with prostate cancer face decisions that can be...
STAYING UP-TO-DATE in the fast-paced world of oncology literature is a daunting task at best. To assist with that task, The ASCO Post has assembled an assortment of studies recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) and the Journal of Oncology Practice (JOP). Future installments...
Weill Cornell Medicine has been awarded a 5-year, $11.3 million Specialized Programs of Research Excellence (SPORE) grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to improve the detection, diagnosis, and treatment of prostate cancer. Established in 1992, SPORE grants serve as the cornerstone of...
Patients with high-risk prostate cancer starting long-term hormone therapy may benefit from two new treatments, according to late-breaking results from the STAMPEDE trial presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) 2017 Congress in Madrid (LBA31_PR). Long-term hormone therapy...
As reported by Baik et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Medicare patients who received androgen-deprivation therapy for prostate cancer do not appear to be at increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and may have an extremely small increased risk for dementia. Study Details The study...
Cora N. Sternberg, MD, of the San Camillo Forlanini Hospital, summarizes a session on the STAMPEDE and LATITUDE trials, as well as a third trial on docetaxel with androgen suppression for localized prostate cancer patients who relapsed after radical prostatectomy and/or radiotherapy (Abstracts LBA31, 783O, 784O).
THE INFORMATION contained in this Clinical Trials Resource Guide includes actively recruiting clinical studies focused on patients with prostate cancer. These studies highlight noninvasive imaging, gene therapy, allogeneic bone marrow transplant, selective androgen receptor modulators, Vitamin D3...
The Prostate Cancer Foundation has announced its 2017 Young Investigator (YI) Awards, which support early-career scientists who are focused on accelerating the delivery of life-extending and life-saving therapies for patients living with prostate cancer. The YI Awards provide 3 years of funding—a...
Internationally recognized genitourinary oncologist Maha Hussain, MD, FACP, FASCO, was born and reared in Baghdad, Iraq. “I came from a family that stressed the value of higher education and especially medicine. I have three uncles who are physicians, and my father encouraged my three siblings and...
Nicholas G. Nickols, MD, PhD, an attending physician at the West Los Angeles Veteran Affairs Medical Center and Assistant Professor of Radiation Oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, has been awarded the prestigious 2017 VALOR Young Investigator Award by the Prostate Cancer Foundation....
Staying up-to-date in the fast-paced world of oncology literature is a daunting task at best. To assist with that task, The ASCO Post has assembled an assortment of studies recently published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The topics range from therapy for stage IV non–small cell lung cancer...
After 19.5 years of follow-up in the PIVOT trial, radical prostatectomy was not associated with significantly improved all-cause or prostate cancer mortality vs observation among men with localized prostate cancer.1 The long-term follow-up was reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by...
The updated results of the PIVOT1 study—reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by Wilt et al and reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—did not show a statistically significant difference between treatment and observation for the initial management approach to men with newly diagnosed...
Two years ago, I was on my way to hospice care after numerous treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy failed to stop the progression of my stage IV castration-resistant prostate cancer. A last-minute call from my oncologist about a phase I trial of combination...
Men with localized prostate cancer who received androgen-deprivation therapy were at significantly higher risk of heart failure than men who did not receive this therapy, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published by Haque et al in the British Journal of Cancer. In the past,...
As reported by Larsen et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a Danish retrospective study has shown reduced cancer-specific and all-cause mortality with postdiagnosis statin use in patients with prostate cancer. Study Details The study involved nationwide Danish registry data from 31,790...
In a meta-analysis reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Xie et al found that metastasis-free survival was a strong surrogate for overall survival in patients with localized prostate cancer, potentially providing a metric that could accelerate assessment of new adjuvant therapy approaches. ...
In the phase III PROSELICA trial reported by Eisenberger et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, a cabazitaxel (Jevtana) dose of 20 mg/m2 (C20) was noninferior for overall survival vs the currently recommended dose of 25 mg/m2 (C25) after docetaxel treatment in metastatic castration-resistant...
BRACHYTHERAPY HAS a long track record in treating cancer, dating back to the first reported use of an implanted radioactive source in 1901, and brachytherapy for the treatment of prostate cancer dates back to 1914, when Pasteu and Degrais used a radium source inserted through a urethral catheter. ...
AS REPORTED by Joseph Chin, MD, of London Health Sciences Centre, London, Ontario, and colleagues in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, ASCO and Clinical Care Ontario (CCO) have issued a joint update to the prior CCO guideline on use of brachytherapy in patients with prostate cancer.1,2 The update ...
ALTHOUGH THE National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®) Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology (NCCN Guidelines®) strongly influence the management of advanced prostate cancer, they do not always reflect actual clinical practice. It turns out that in the real world, there are multiple areas ...
ANTAGONISM OF THE ANDROGEN AXIS remains a cornerstone of systemic therapy for high-risk localized and metastatic prostate cancer, reflecting the central role of androgen-dependent biologic mechanisms in hormone-naive disease. Despite the use of standard androgen-deprivation therapy, men with...
Two years ago, I was on my way to hospice care after numerous treatments, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy failed to stop the progression of my stage IV castration-resistant prostate cancer. A last-minute call from my oncologist about a phase I combination trial of the...
The phase III FIRSTANA trial has shown no difference in overall survival with two dose regimens of cabazitaxel (Jevtana) vs docetaxel in the first-line treatment of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. Results were reported by Oudard et al in the Journal of Clinical Oncology....
In a health-related quality-of-life study among patients in the phase III TOAD trial, immediate vs delayed androgen-deprivation therapy was associated with early worsening of androgen-deprivation therapy–related symptoms but few other comparative adverse effects on functioning or quality of...
Among men diagnosed with prostate cancer, about one in two will receive androgen-deprivation therapy, which is associated with many potential adverse side effects, including significant bone loss and increased risk for low trauma or fragility fractures similar to those found in people with primary...
In a single-center analysis reported in JAMA Oncology, Patel et al found that among men undergoing elective radical prostatectomy, those with low-volume intermediate-risk disease had significantly higher rates of adverse pathologic findings compared than did those with very low-risk and low-risk...
In a study reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, Wyatt et al found high agreement between driver mutations in plasma circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) and metastatic tissue biopsy in castration-resistant prostate cancer. Mutations Identified in ctDNA In the study, targeted...
A systematic review and meta-analysis has found no association between vasectomy and high-grade, advanced, or fatal prostate cancer but a weak association with any prostate cancer. These findings were reported in JAMA Oncology by Bhindi et al. Study Details The analysis involved 53 studies,...
After 19.5 years of follow-up in the PIVOT trial, radical prostatectomy was not associated with significantly improved all-cause or prostate cancer mortality vs observation among men with localized prostate cancer. The long-term follow-up data were reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by ...
I was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer in 2002. I had no idea the disease and its treatment would cause me to gain more than 50 pounds and nearly cripple me with pain. I had a transurethral resection of the prostate following my diagnosis and have had multiple testosterone-suppression...
LATITUDE Trial ASCO expert Sumanta Pal, MD, of the City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Duarte, California, commented on the LATITUDE trial at a press conference. “In 2014, docetaxel added to hormonal therapy showed an improved survival benefit in two trials—CHAARTED and STAMPEDE. It was no ...
The addition of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) plus prednisolone/prednisone to standard androgen-deprivation therapy improves survival in men starting treatment for locally advanced or metastatic, hormone--naive prostate cancer, according to the results of two potentially practice-changing studies...
A draft recommendation from the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) advises that for men aged 55 to 69, the decision to be screened for prostate cancer should be an individual one, based on the man’s own values and priorities and discussions with a clinician about the potential benefits...
For a man aged 55 to 69 years, the decision to be screened for prostate cancer should be an individual one, based on the man’s own values and priorities and discussions with a clinician about the potential benefits and harms of screening, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) advised in ...
In a Swedish study reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Stacy Loeb, MD, of New York University, and colleagues found that use of testosterone replacement therapy was not associated with an increased risk of prostate cancer and was associated with a lower risk of aggressive cancer among...
Researchers presented a preclinical study at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) that demonstrated the efficacy and optimal dose for targeted photodynamic therapy (PDT) to treat prostate cancer before and during surgery (Abstract 7). Targeted...
Simultaneous injections of the radiopharmaceuticals fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (F-18 FDG) and fluorine-18 sodium fluoride (F-18 NaF) followed by quantitative scanning significantly improved image quality and detection of bone metastases at a lower dose, according to research presented at...
An estimated one in seven American men will be affected by prostate cancer in their lifetime. Prostate-specific molecular imaging can help to clinically manage the disease much more efficiently, especially if the cancer returns, according to research revealed at the 2017 Annual Meeting of the...
In the phase III CA184-095trial reported in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Tomasz M. Beer, MD, FACP, of the Knight Cancer Institute, Oregon Health and Science University, and colleagues found that ipilimumab (Yervoy) did not increase overall survival vs placebo in men with asymptomatic or...
The recent report of results of RTOG 9601 by Shipley et al in The New England Journal of Medicine1—reviewed in this issue of The ASCO Post—strongly supports the variably used practice of adding “androgen blockade” to salvage radiation therapy in men with a rising prostate-specific antigen (PSA)...
As reported in The New England Journal of Medicine by W.U. Shipley, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and colleagues in the NRG Oncology Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG), the final analysis of the phase III RTOG 9601 trial shows that the addition of...
Combined testing for urinary PCA3 and TMPRSS2:ERG (T2:ERG) RNA may increase accuracy in identifying the risk for aggressive early prostate cancer, according to a study reported in JAMA Oncology by Sanda et al in the EDRN-PCA3 Study Group. Study Details The study involved 516 development cohort...
Tanya B. Dorff, MD, of the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of the City of Hope, discuss two key presentations on prostate cancer: findings on adding abiraterone for men with high-risk prostate cancer starting long-term androgen-deprivation therapy, and an after-market study on continuing enzalutamide post PSA progression in men with chemotherapy-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. (Abstracts LBA5003, 5004)
Neeraj Agarwal, MD, of Huntsman Cancer Institute, and Sumanta K. Pal, MD, of the City of Hope, examine the study findings on androgen-deprivation therapy with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone or placebos in newly diagnosed high-risk metastatic hormone-naive prostate cancer. (Abstract LBA3)
As reported in the Plenary Session at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting and in The New England Journal of Medicine by Fizazi et al, the phase III LATITUDE trial has shown that the addition of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and prednisone to androgen-deprivation therapy resulted in marked improvements in...
Gerhardt Attard, MD, PhD, of The Royal Marsden Hospital and The Institute of Cancer Research, discusses trial results on continued enzalutamide post prostate-specific antigen progression in men with chemotherapy-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. (Abstract 5004)
Nicholas D. James, MBBS, PhD, of Queen Elizabeth Hospital, discusses study findings on adding abiraterone for men with high-risk prostate cancer starting long-term androgen-deprivation therapy (Abstract LBA5003).
Karim Fizazi, MD, PhD, of the University Paris-Sud, discusses study findings on androgen-deprivation therapy with abiraterone acetate plus prednisone or placebos in newly diagnosed high-risk metastatic hormone-naive prostate cancer. (Abstract LBA3)
Adding abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) plus prednisone to standard hormonal therapy for men newly diagnosed with high-risk, metastatic prostate cancer lowers the chance of death by 38%. In a phase III clinical trial of 1,200 men, abiraterone also more than doubled the median time until the cancer...