Base on a recently published news release, a prospective study performed and funded by the commercial company GenomeDx Biosciences showed that their new Decipher Cancer Classifier test reclassifies the tumor aggressiveness in men who have had surgery as their primary prostate cancer treatment. According to the company, this newly validated test will improve clinical decision-making [...]
Again and again I have mentioned the huge need we have for the development of reliable bio-markers. Reliable bio-markers will allow us to know which men will respond positively to a treatment (also those who will not) and when a treatment is still effective (also when it no longer is effective). These biomarkers really don’t [...]
Being able to make better decisions about drug sequencing and combinations has become one of the current hot topics in prostate cancer research. Given that we have a number of newer drugs to use this is an important clinical issue as we make important treatment decisions. Making these clinical decisions is tough. The fact is [...]
Imaging of prostate cancer has been improving by leaps and bounds over the last few years. Current imaging techniques are not sensitive enough to give us an accurate picture of the cancer. This means that we lose predictive abilities and don’t always have adequate information to make the best treatment decisions. It also means, in [...]
Historically, too many men were haphazardly treated for prostate cancer. Happily, the incidents of over treatment have been declining and the general acceptance of Active Surveillance has emerged as the preferred management strategy for men with very low–risk prostate cancer. However, There is still too few high-quality comparative effectiveness studies evaluating the incremental risks associated [...]
We have a number of newer hormone pathway drugs now available to treat men with metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). Researchers have shown that prostate specific antigen (PSA) response can be used as a pharmaco-dynamic end-point that may help identify men with early resistance to these new drugs. They found that there is clinical [...]
Making treatment decisions once you have been diagnosed with prostate cancer is difficult. Often, it is impossible to accurately and reliably be able to predict the eventual course of the cancer. Prostate cancer, besides being one of the slower growing cancers, is also one of the deadliest. So good, informed decisions are vital. The original [...]
Not often discussed, but a valuable measure of prostate cancer bone activity is serum (in the blood) alkaline phosphatase. It is a normal enzyme produced naturally by the body. Everyone produces some of this enzyme regardless of his or her state of health, gender, or age. The tissues that produce the most alkaline phosphatase are the [...]
The constant hope and conversation of late has surrounded what is referred to as a liquid biopsy. The hope and goal is to no longer need to have an invasive needle biopsy to diagnose and stage prostate cancer. Biopsies are not accurate because there are too many false negatives, they only evaluate the actual tissue [...]
Researchers at the Duke Cancer Institute along with other cancer centers, in the largest analysis of its kind have found that the organ site where prostate cancer spreads has a direct impact on a man’s survival. They found that men with lymph-only metastasis statistically have the longest overall survival possibility, while those with liver involvement [...]
