Today most doctors rely on their personal evaluation or objective response criteria (OR) of a man to know when docetaxel chemotherapy has stopped working. The earlier this determination can be accurately made the quicker an alternative treatment can e put into place. Personal evaluations without any validated tools are unreliable and never consistent among doctors. [...]
There is more evidence that the blood test used to count the number of cells circulating in the blood and shed from prostate tumors (circulating tumor cells or CTCs) can indicate whether a treatment is working or not working. A major new study showed that the number of these circulating tumor cells in the blood [...]
Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is an area we will continue to hear more about as their importance to our understanding prostate cancer continues to increase. CTCs show the movement of cancer cells though the body. It is believed that these CTCs are the method that cancer uses to spread through our body (metastasize). Measuring the [...]
Over the last several years’ prostate cancer treatment options for men with advanced prostate cancer has gone from rags to riches. We now have multiple options for treatment and there is every indication that the number of options will continue to grow. However, we do see that not all men will respond to all treatments. [...]
An uncommon, but very aggressive form of prostate cancer is known as Neuroendocrine prostate cancer (NEPC). It is generally accepted that Circulating Tumor Cell (CTC) counts as measured by CellSearch (a method to catch and count these cells in the blood) are prognostic for most men with metastatic prostate cancer (mPC), but are not well [...]
Better prediction tools to predict treatment outcome in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) should significantly improve treatment outcomes. Without good predictive measures we often don't know when is the optimum time to stop a therapy and move to another. This means that we might maturely stop an effective treatment losing the effectiveness of [...]
The use of the PSA as a prostate cancer screening tool has been a controversial issue for many years. Within the last year the issue has again come to the forefront of the public awareness, especially because of the recent move of the U.S Preventative Task Force to discourage using the PSA as a screening [...]
Using a CTC-chip that measures the level of circulating tumor cells in blood can provide an important insight into the prognosis and potential rates of recurrent disease, according to data from a developing study at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) 101st Annual Meeting 2010. [...]
A relatively new arrival on the cancer scene is a test called the circulating cancer cell test. Many of the major labs and hospital cancer cells are able to run the test, including Quest Diagnostics, which has named this test as the Cell Search test. Just like the PSA test, it is a blood test. [...]
There is nothing more frustration that the current methods used by the FDA to approve drugs. The theory is great, but how it gets translated into our real world is killer, I mean a literal killer of men. The FDA wants assurances that before they approve a drug that it really works, or shows efficacy. [...]
