Hemo/Onc Today published an editorial about the status of prostate cancer research. The author, Donald L. Trump, MD compares the status of knowledge in prostate cancer compared to breast cancer. He says:
Important progress has been made and new leads established in improving our understanding of prostate cancer and improving the care of patients with this disease. New work on the etiology of the disease yields evidence for association with a heretofore uncharacterized virus as well as strong evidence of the polygenic influences on prostate cancer risk.
Increasingly precise algorithms are being developed to enhance the clinician’s ability to predict treatment failure after initial therapy for apparently localized disease. There are now clearly established treatment plans that improve the quantity and quality of survival in men with metastatic disease, progressive despite androgen deprivation.
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Despite the presence of some good news, I would like to reflect for a moment on how little progress we have made in the use of systemic treatment of high-risk, localized or early recurrent disease. First, why should we expect or demand progress in this disease condition?
It is certainly an oversimplification and the analogy may not be apt, but let us compare breast and prostate cancer. Similarities between these two diseases are multiple (see table 1). National Comprehensive Cancer Network guidelines provide 91 pages of treatment approaches for subcategories of women with breast cancer and 32 pages of guidelines for men with prostate cancer.
He concludes by saying, Oncologists and patients should demand more!
This is a must read for anyone interested in prostate cancer. It shows how important it is for all of us to work for more and well focused research.
To read the entire article click here.
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