Radium-223 Chloride (Alpharadin) is now available for the treatment of men with advanced prostate cancer who have symptomatic bone metastases (painful) and who are also castration-resistant (hormone-refractory). This is an expanded access program that will allow the use of Alpharadin prior to the formal FDA approval of the treatment.

From the Clinical Trials Web Page :
“Expanded access is a means by which manufacturers make investigational new drugs available, under certain circumstances, to treat a patient(s) with a serious disease or condition who cannot participate in a controlled clinical trial.

Most human use of investigational new drugs takes place in controlled clinical trials conducted to assess the safety and efficacy of new drugs. Data from these trials are used to determine whether a drug is safe and effective, and serve as the basis for the drug marketing application. Sometimes, patients do not qualify for these controlled trials because of other health problems, age, or other factors, or are otherwise unable to enroll in such trials (e.g., a patient may not live sufficiently close to a clinical trial site).

For patients who cannot participate in a clinical trial of an investigational drug, but have a serious disease or condition that may benefit from treatment with the drug, FDA regulations enable manufacturers of such drugs to provide those patients access to the drug under certain situations, known as “expanded access.” For example, the drug cannot expose patients to unreasonable risks given the severity of the disease to be treated and the patient does not have any other satisfactory therapeutic options (e.g., an approved drug that could be used to treat the patient’s disease or condition). The manufacturer must be willing to make the drug available for expanded access use. The primary intent of expanded access is to provide treatment for a patient’s disease or condition, rather than to collect data about the study drug’.

To see the full inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as the sites participating in the trial go to:
http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01516762

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