At the 2013 European Cancer Congress in Amsterdam Dr. Howard Scher from Sloan Kettering Hospital reported that a panel of biomarkers could identify men with metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) who were responding well or less well to treatment with Zytiga + prednisone (abiraterone + prednisone).
Dr. Scher provided data in his presentation to support the two following concepts:
!- At 12 weeks after initiation of Zytiga therapy the number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in combination with serum levels of lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) can predict how well the Zytiga has worked.
2- If the combination of abiraterone acetate + prednisone has not provided a substantial clinical benefit at 12 weeks, no further improvement in patient outcome can reasonably be expected.
The data presented by Dr. Scher was based on a risk assessment of 711 men with chemotherapy-naive mCRPC who participated in the second major randomized Phase III clinical trial of abiraterone acetate + prednisone vs. a placebo + prednisone (the COU-AA-30 trial).
Dr. Scher is was quoted, “The probability of being alive at 2 years was 46 percent for patients in a good risk category, while if patients were in a high-risk ca