My post to this blog that was written yesterday indicated that for certain men the early use of chemotherapy (docetaxil) could provide significant life extending benefits, especially for men with very advanced prostate cancer. For the purpose of clarification, in this case early use means in men who are still hormone responsive.
Given that chemotherapy is only approved for men who were no longer hormone responsive, or castrate resistant, this could be a game changer for the treatment of men with metastatic prostate cancer. I indicated that this could open up a whole new potential world of rescheduling treatments, new protocols as well as the possibility of combining treatments with chemotherpy.
As I think about this I come to the conclusion that besides doing good research and seeing which combinations could work to extend survival, we need to remain aware that some drugs, particularly toxic chemotherapy drugs like docetaxil should not be combined with other drugs.
This concern is driven home because there has been prior research that shows that docetaxel (Taxotere) is amplified when used with CYP17 inhibitors like ketoconazole and Zytiga.
A clinical study of docetaxel multi-dosed