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 [...]