I just returned, along with Malecare’s Executive Director Darryl Mitteldorf and Dr. Wendy Lebowitz, from the ASCO Genitourinary Cancers Symposium in San Francisco. The three of us often attend this meeting, but this one had a new and very special item, a research poster (abstract no. 253) that was presented by Malecare and Mitteldorf. The [...]
The newest gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) antagonist therapy drug, degarelix (aka Firmagon) has become more commonly used in everyday clinical practice as an alternative hormone therapy treatment drug (ADT). Given that its use has become common it is important to understand both its safety and efficacy as compared to our older standard drugs. The best way [...]
There has been a lot of buzz around the new scanning contrasts that have come into limited usage for evaluating metastasized cancer cells that are in the bones. Despite the enthusiasm from the prostate and breast cancer communities, CMS (Medicare) continues to limit its financial coverage for PET scans using the contrast NaF-18 even though [...]
Currently, there are a number of different treatments used to treat recurrent prostate cancer when the primary treatment had radiation has failed. In this situation surgery is considered very difficult and can only be successfully performed by an experienced surgeon, so alternative treatments are often considered. Long-term data about the success of these alternative treatments [...]
I have talked a lot about our need to take the next step in clinical care, understanding the best sequencing of our drugs. Since we have a number of new drugs to treat advanced prostate cancer we now need to better understand which drugs should be used in which men as well as their proper [...]
Can exercise improve the quality of life of men with advanced prostate cancer and also extend their survival? To help answer this question a major new global trial known as GAP4 has been launched in Dublin, Ireland. The trial has a goal of recruiting 866 men from seven countries, including Ireland. The trial will be [...]
Cancer is a genetic disease, so prostate cancer is a genetic problem. This statement might be the most important one we can make when trying to describe the current, overall situation we face as prostate cancer survivors! Many institutions have begun significant research studies trying to understand the actual genetic keys to prostate cancer. Prostate [...]
Once a clinical trial has been completed, especially when the trial is positive, researchers will “data mine” the published information. The published results provide additional opportunities to evaluate the data in different ways than the trial was originally designed. This new data can be very interesting and informative, however it also needs to be considered [...]
Researchers are now beginning to understand which men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) might be helped by radium-223 (Xofigo), and for which men Xofigo will be a waste of time and money, and possibly cause harm. They have found that baseline ECOG performance status, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), hemoglobin (Hb) levels, and the concomitant use of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) [...]
My good friend and fellow advocate Mike Scott (Prostate Cancer Info Link) introduced me to a new web site produced by the University of Chicago called Cost of Care (www.CostofCare.org). The site is designed around the novel idea that the cost we must pay for our cancer care has become another negative side effect or [...]
