Combination Chemotherapy Treatments Maybe More Effective Than Each Drug In Sequence

According to a news release from MD Anderson they have recently completed a study that shows that combining two separate chemotherapy agents is more effective than sequencing them one after another. The current standard of care for the cytotoxic chemotherapy agents used to treat prostate cancer is to treat men with advanced metastatic castration-resistant prostate [...]

An Opinion Piece – The Time Has Come To Actually Manage The Adverse Effects of Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT)

Starting androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) to treat advanced prostate cancer is usually the start of a long treatment period that will continue for many years, actually until you die. Since our goal in cancer treatment is to make cancer a chronic illness and since prostate cancer does progress for most men in a relatively slow [...]

Towards An Understanding Of The Possible Future Role Of Combining Chemotherapy With Immunotherapy – On The Horizon

There was a study published in the journal Nature that described a promising new combination therapy for the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancers that are non-responsive to chemotherapy. The study is entitled "Immunosuppressive Plasma Cells Impede T-Cell Dependent Immunogenic Chemotherapy."  The study was conducted at the University of California, San Diego. Prostate cancers [...]

Evaluating The Side Effects Of Docetaxel (Taxotere) vs Cabazitaxel (Jevtana)

Many men express great hesitation to move to chemotherapy with both docetaxel (taxotere) and cabazitaxel (Jevtana) because of the side effects which can include alopecia (hair loss), nail changes, neuropathy, and dysgeusia (a distortion of the sense of taste). A group of researchers hypothesized that the adverse side effects (AE) of these two chemotherapy drugs, [...]

The PREVAIL Trial Shows That Enzalutamide Not Only Increases Overall Survival Over Placebo, It Also Delays the Onset Of The First Skeletal Event

Analysis of the PREVAIL Trial showed that Enzalutamide (Xtandi) significantly increased overall survival and radiographic progression-free survival compared with placebo in men with prostate cancer who were asymptomatic and minimally symptomatic, chemotherapy-naive and who had metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Now, an additional analysis of the data has shown the effect enzalutamide also has on [...]

SEER PSA Data Is Flawed and Removed By the NCI – What Are the Implications for the Flawed USPTF PSA Debacle?

I am not sure what to do with this information, but it certainly could be described as a rather large elephant in the room. We all are very familiar with the prostate cancer PSA test controversy brought on by the United States Preventive Task Force (USPTF). To quickly review the issue, the USPTF developed a [...]

The Development of A Novel Blood Biomarker for Detecting AR-V7 and Resistance to Zytiga and Xtandi

At the current AUA Annual Meeting going on in New Orleans, there was a presentation given by Haitao Zhang and colleagues. They described their work developing a novel blood-based assay (test) for detecting androgen receptor (AR) splice variants in men with advanced prostate cancer. Their work relies on the premise that AR-V7 expression underlies resistance [...]

Predicting the Long-Term Survival of Men with A Biochemical Recurrence Post-Surgery Who Are Hormone Naive Can Change How We Treat Them

Appearing in the European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging a recent study provides data on the long-term survival of men with a biochemical recurrence after failed surgery. In the study by Giovacchini et al. it was shown that a PET/CT scan (specifically a [11C] choline PET/CT) could predict the long-term survival of men [...]

Is Delaying The Start of ADT Safe for Prostate Cancer Patients?

A recently previewed (prior to the upcoming ASCO Annual Meeting) of a large study shows that men with prostate cancer who had a PSA-based relapse (Biochemical Recurrence) could delay starting androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) until they started experiencing symptoms from the cancer. They found that this delay would not affect the men’s long-term survival. The [...]

Cardiovascular Disease And Its Relationship With Androgen Deprivation (ADT)

Clinicians believe that there is an association between the risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the duration and type of androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) in men with prostate cancer. Researchers took data from 2006 to 2012 on filled drug prescriptions from the Swedish national health care registers. A cohort of 41,362 men with prostate cancer who were on ADT [...]

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