I have been at American Association of Clinical Oncologists (ASCO) since last Thursday.  On the prostate cancer front the most exciting part of the meeting has been our being in Chicago and that the weather which has been fantastic.
The only truly newsworthy thing that I have come across so far has been an abstract by Hurwitz et al. from the RTOG 0621 trial of adjuvant radiation, androgen deprivation, and docetaxel for high-risk prostate cancer post-prostatectomy.  The abstract has reported a positive result in these very high high-risk men.
The trial was very small, including only 76 men with a median age of 62 years.  They found at 3 years the rate of no progression was 71 percent (which was statistically significant). There were two deaths during the trial, but only one was related to prostate cancer.
Side effects experienced from the chemotherapy were no different than normally anticipated.  They included peripheral neuropathy and febrile neutropenia.  Additionally, six men (8 percent) had grade 3 or grade 4 treatment-related toxicities.
The researchers concluded that the adding ADT and docetaxel to adjuvant radiation therapy for men at high-risk of failure following prostatectomy resulted in a significant improvement in freedom from biochemical progression as compared to historical controls. They also suggested that further Phase III trials assessing chemotherapy in this high-risk population are warranted.

This finding should not be a huge surprise given my post of 12/6/2013, Early Chemotherapy for Men Who Still are Hormone Responsive- For Some It Might Offer Extra Survival Time .

Joel T Nowak, M.A., M.S.W.