On August 13, 2013 I wrote an important post about the terrible practice beginning to rear its head called step therapy. Step therapy is the practice of insurance companies requiring less expensive drugs be prescribed prior to more expensive ones despite the comparative efficacy of the drugs and their different mechanisms of action. This practice [...]
Recently men with advanced prostate cancer have found that their insurance companies have been dictating what drugs they can get instead of their doctor making the best decision for them. At Malecare we have seen that when a man with metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) has finished taking chemotherapy they have been steered by [...]
Enzalutamide (Xtandi) monotherapy induced striking declines in prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in a majority of patients with hormone-naive prostate cancer in a phase II trial, and this oral agent appears to have little effect on bone mineral density. If these findings are confirmed in a phase III trial, then enzalutamide may be an alternative to androgen [...]
Xtandi is often referred to as a “super bicalutamide (Casodex).” Casodex functions as a androgen blockade, which deters testosterone from being able to interact with the prostate cancer cell and feed the growth of the cancer. There are some oncologists in the United States and the standard hormone treatment in Europe often utilizes Casodex as [...]
The treatment of advanced prostate cancer, and in particular castrate resistant prostate cancer (CRPC), has changed greatly over the last 4 years. Treatment options have expanded and now offer multiple treatment possibilities that did not exist 4 years ago. With the addition of all these new options, so comes the addition of significant economic costs, [...]
The great news for for our brothers in Europe is that Xtandi (Enzalutamide) has been approved for use in the European Union (EU) for the treatment of men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer whose disease has progressed on or after chemotherapy (docetaxel). Following the regulatory review process by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and a [...]
Since it FDA approval in 2004, docetaxel (a taxane based chemotherapy) has been the standard first-line chemotherapy for men with metastatic prostate cancer (mCRPC). Other than the trial of Provenge all the successful phase III trials conducted in mCRPC focused on men experiencing cancer progression after first-line docetaxel chemotherapy. The implication is that improving the [...]
There was a lot of interesting and important presentations at the recent American Urological Association meeting, however the one item that will have the most impact on men with advanced prostate cancer is the new guidelines that were proposed for the treatment of men with castrate resistant prostate cancer. The guidelines were organized by creating [...]
The European Medicines Agency's Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) has granted approval of Xtandi in the treatment of men with castrate resistant prostate cancer that has progressed after the use of chemotherapy. It has already been approved for use in the United States. Xtandi (aka Enzalutamide and MDV3100) is a strong androgen [...]
I don’t understand why if I have hormone resistant advanced prostate cancer why the new drugs, Zytiga and Xtandi work. These drugs are still hormone therapies, is my prostate cancer hormone resistant? I recently received an email asking me this question and I thought it might be a question many people have, so I am [...]
