Prostate Cancer

Image copyright Getty Images A major trial of an immunotherapy drug has shown it can be effective in some men with advanced prostate cancer. The men had stopped responding to the main treatment options. Researchers found that a small proportion of men, described as "super responders", remained well even after the trial ended, despite a very poor prognosis before treatment. Last week it was reported the same drug had proved effective in treating advanced head and neck cancers . What is immunotherapy? Immunotherapy uses our own immune systems to recognise and attack cancer cells. It's already being used as a standard treatment for some cancers such as melanomas - and being tested on many others too. What did the study find? It found that one in 20 men with advanced prostate cancer responded to the drug pembrolizumab - and saw their tumours actually shrink or disappear altogether. Although a relatively small number, some of them gained years of extra life, the stu...

Although one in nine men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis in his lifetime, cutting-edge research has allowed more men to live longer or even be cured. Statistics show that one in nine men will receive a prostate cancer diagnosis during his lifetime, making it the most common cancer among men after skin cancer. But thanks to the work being done at institutions like City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in California, more men are being cured each year, and those who aren’t cured are living longer. One such program that sheds light on this cause is City of Hope’s NoShaver November. The month-long fundraising and awareness campaign urges participants to forego shaving to start a conversation, encourage testing and raise critical funds to continue leading-edge prostate cancer research and promising new therapies conducted at City of Hope.  CURE ® recently spoke with Dr.  Tanya Dorff , a medical oncologist at City of Hope who specializes in prostate cancer, about the...

Micrograph showing prostatic acinar adenocarcinoma (the most common form of prostate cancer) Credit: Wikipedia Some men with advanced prostate cancer who have exhausted all other treatment options could live for two years or more on immunotherapy, a major clinical trial has shown. Researchers found that a small proportion of men were 'super responders' and were alive and well even after the trial had ended despite having had a very poor prognosis before treatment. The study found that one in 20 men with end-stage prostate cancer responded to the immunotherapy pembrolizumab—but although the number who benefited was small, these patients sometimes gained years of extra life. The most dramatic responses came in patients whose tumours had mutations in genes involved in repairing DNA, and the researchers are investigating whether this group might especially benefit from immunotherapy. The phase II clinical trial was led globally by a team at The Institute of Cancer Resear...

New knowledge is beginning to explain the decades-old question of why a treatment may work for one patient but not another. Cutting-edge technologies that allow clinicians to identify the mutations present in a patient’s tumor cells have resulted in the emerging field of precision medicine, or customized treatments based on the unique biology of an individual’s tumor. Precision medicine is an approach to disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variations in genes, immune function, environment, and lifestyle. Doctors now know that each patient doesn’t just have prostate cancer, they have their own particular form of prostate cancer. The hope is that someday, all treatment will start with genetic tests of the cancer, followed by custom treatments. Currently, there are multiple commercial tests that are approved by Medicare and select private insurance companies to better understand the aggressiveness of a tumor. Studies suggest that these tissue-based ge...

Reports of new cancer treatments often raise high hopes and expectations, particularly, of course, among cancer patients and their families. But raising expectations is not something that Samer Ezziddin, Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Saarland University Hospital is keen to do. 'In most cases, we cannot heal the patients who take part in our therapeutic programme. Our aim is to extend life expectancy by a number of months or even years, without impairing the patients' quality of life,' explains Ezziddin. And although over the course of his career he has seen patients whose cancer has regressed completely despite extremely poor prognoses, such cases remain the exception and should be regarded as 'statistical outliers' rather than miracle cures. The battle to treat the many different varieties of cancer continues to be very challenging, involving careful but laborious work, where progress is measured in small steps...

Reports of new cancer treatments often raise high hopes and expectations, particularly, of course, among cancer patients and their families. But raising expectations is not something that Samer Ezziddin, Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Saarland University Hospital is keen to do. 'In most cases, we cannot heal the patients who take part in our therapeutic programme. Our aim is to extend life expectancy by a number of months or even years, without impairing the patients' quality of life,' explains Ezziddin. And although over the course of his career he has seen patients whose cancer has regressed completely despite extremely poor prognoses, such cases remain the exception and should be regarded as 'statistical outliers' rather than miracle cures. The battle to treat the many different varieties of cancer continues to be very challenging, involving careful but laborious work, where progress is measured in small step...

Psychosocial problems that adversely affect quality of life are common among men after receiving treatment for prostate cancer (PCa), and they need help managing depression, coping with fear of cancer recurrence, and dealing with other issues, according to investigators. Using data from a web-based support system that was part of a National Cancer Institute-funded 5-year study of 431 men with PCa, Erin K. Tagai, PhD, MPH, a postdoctoral fellow at Fox Chase Cancer Center/Temple University Health System in Philadelphia, and colleagues examined psychosocial concerns of men within 1 year of PCa treatment. They examined how confident men felt about maintaining their health and relationships with others and their satisfaction with how they communicate with their physicians. They also investigated practical concerns related to managing family, job, and financial responsibilities. Re-entry phase Dr Tagai’s team labeled the first year post-treatment as the re-entry phase because patients a...

Reports of new cancer treatments often raise high hopes and expectations, particularly, of course, among cancer patients and their families. But raising expectations is not something that Samer Ezziddin, Professor of Nuclear Medicine and Director of the Department of Nuclear Medicine at Saarland University Hospital is keen to do. 'In most cases, we cannot heal the patients who take part in our therapeutic programme. Our aim is to extend life expectancy by a number of months or even years, without impairing the patients' quality of life,' explains Ezziddin. And although over the course of his career he has seen patients whose cancer has regressed completely despite extremely poor prognoses, such cases remain the exception and should be regarded as 'statistical outliers' rather than miracle cures. The battle to treat the many different varieties of cancer continues to be very challenging, involving careful but laborious work, where progress is measured in small step...

Professor Samer Ezziddin. Credit: Thorsten Mohr Prostate cancer accounts for 26 percent of male cancer cases diagnosed in Germany, making it the most common form of malignant tumor in men. If the cancer becomes metastatic, it is not unlikely that it will prove fatal in the generally elderly patients. Scientists and doctors at Saarland University Hospital recently conducted a clinical trial in which they established the effectiveness of a therapeutic method that is successful in controlling late-stage prostate tumors and their metastases without causing serious side effects. The novel element in their approach involves combining two radioactive substances that are able to destroy the tumor cells by very precisely irradiating them at very short (millimeter or micrometer) range. As a result, a patient's life expectancy can be extended without any substantial impairment in quality of life. The pilot study, which was led by nuclear radiologist Professor Samer Ezziddin, has been p...

Sometimes after finishing prostate cancer treatment, men get an unwelcome surprise: their prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels creep higher, suggesting tumors too small to be seen lurk somewhere in the body. This leads to several options. Doctors can continue to monitor a man’s condition with imaging scans. Or, given the anxiety associated with rising PSA, they might try to lower the levels with chemically “castrating” drugs that inhibit testosterone, a hormone that makes prostate tumors grow faster. Following that treatment, called androgen deprivation therapy (ADT), PSA generally declines and may become undetectable. But what if PSA climbs further despite ADT’s inhibiting effects on testosterone? This condition is called nonmetastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (nmCRPC). It’s called “nonmetastatic” because cancer hasn’t spread in a way that’s detectable with imaging technology. And it’s called “castration-resistant” because PSA isn’t responding to the chemically castrat...

publication date: Nov. 22, 2019 Clinical Roundup Men who seek treatment at a multidisciplinary prostate cancer clinic are more likely to be advised about treatment choices and to receive care that complies with evidence-based treatment guidelines, an MD Anderson Cancer Center study found. African American men who visited the MultiD clinic also were more likely to receive definitive, or curative, therapy, compared with national trends. The findings, published in Cancer , are based on the largest and longest analysis of a MultiD clinic database. The study evaluated treatment choice at MD Anderson’s Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Clinic in comparison to U.S. national trends assessed by reviewing the SEER database. “Men who visit a MultiD prostate clinic have the opportunity to see a radiation oncologist and a urologist in the same visit, giving them the chance to discuss treatments options and potential side effects in order to make an informed treatment decision,” Chad Tang, assi...

Dive Brief: Myovant Sciences said Tuesday a late-stage trial studying its lead drug in advanced prostate cancer met its primary and secondary goals, clearing the path for the company to next year submit the experimental therapy for Food and Drug Administration approval. The Phase 3 study tested relugolix, a so-called GnRH receptor antagonist, against leuprolide acetate injection, which is a standard androgen deprivation therapy. Two-thirds of 934 enrolled patients received Myovant's treatment while one-third received leuoprolide acetate. Ninety-seven percent of men given Myovant's drug responded to treatment, meaning testosterone was suppressed to castrate levels through 48 weeks. That compared to 89% of study participants in the standard-of-care arm, yielding a between-group difference of about eight percentage points. Following the readout, Myovant's stock sprung up by more than 150% Tuesday morning.  Dive Insight: Next year is shaping up to be consequential for M...

HOUSTON -- Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients have multiple standard-of-care treatment options available, but many are not fully informed of their choices. A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found men who seek treatment at a multidisciplinary (MultiD) prostate cancer clinic are more likely to be advised about treatment choices and to receive care that complies with evidence-based treatment guidelines. African American men who visited the MultiD clinic also were more likely to receive definitive, or curative, therapy, compared with national trends. The findings, published in Cancer , are based on the largest and longest analysis of a MultiD clinic database. The study evaluated treatment choice at MD Anderson's Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Clinic in comparison to U.S. national trends assessed by reviewing the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. According to the American Cancer Society, 174,650 new ca...

San Francisco, CA (UroToday.com) -- Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients have multiple standard-of-care treatment options available, but many are not fully informed of their choices. A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found men who seek treatment at a multidisciplinary (MultiD) prostate cancer clinic are more likely to be advised about treatment choices and to receive care that complies with evidence-based treatment guidelines. African American men who visited the MultiD clinic also were more likely to receive definitive, or curative, therapy, compared with national trends. The findings, published in  Cancer ,  are based on the largest and longest analysis of a MultiD clinic database. The study evaluated treatment choice at MD Anderson’s Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Clinic in comparison to U.S. national trends assessed by reviewing the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. Accordin...

Micrograph showing prostatic acinar adenocarcinoma (the most common form of prostate cancer) Credit: Wikipedia Newly diagnosed prostate cancer patients have multiple standard-of-care treatment options available, but many are not fully informed of their choices. A study led by researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center found men who seek treatment at a multidisciplinary (MultiD) prostate cancer clinic are more likely to be advised about treatment choices and to receive care that complies with evidence-based treatment guidelines. African American men who visited the MultiD clinic also were more likely to receive definitive, or curative, therapy, compared with national trends. The findings, published in Cancer , are based on the largest and longest analysis of a MultiD clinic database. The study evaluated treatment choice at MD Anderson's Multidisciplinary Prostate Cancer Clinic in comparison to U.S. national trends assessed by reviewing the Surveillance,...

19 . 11 .19 Queen’s University Belfast receives £1.25m to develop prostate cancer treatment Queen’s University Belfast and The University of Manchester have been awarded £1.25m by Prostate Cancer UK and Movember to continue advancing treatment for prostate cancer as part of the Belfast-Manchester Centre for Excellence. The funding will allow clinical trials to be expanded, develop and pioneer novel treatments while enhancing expert knowledge of this aggressive cancer that affects one in eight men. With prostate cancer being the most common cancer among males in the UK with more than 47, 500 new diagnoses every year, the funding started back in 2014. Prostate Cancer UK invested £5m to create the first regional Movember Centre of Excellence in partnership between Queen’s University Belfast and The University of Manchester. Since the formation of the Belfast-Manchester Centre of Excellence (known as FASTMAN) the researchers have established new tests to find high risk patients, and ...

WAFF spoke with Robert Davis, a Vietnam veteran, and a prostate cancer survivor. He considers himself lucky - he found the disease before he ever had serious symptoms. At the age of 62, he started getting PSA tests, which is short for Prostate-specific antigen. This is a simple blood test. Davis’s levels kept rising over 2 and a half years, so doctors took a closer look and found he had cancer. https://ift.tt/37hXhK2

Medicare is a great health insurance option for eligible retirees. However, working in the healthcare insurance industry, one issue I’ve seen not being talked about properly is the out-of-pocket costs for cancer treatment. No matter which option a retiree takes while on Medicare, there are costs the retiree will be responsible for that could be avoided if they fully understood all of their options. Cancer is still the second most common cause of death in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), men have a 39.3% lifetime chance of being diagnosed with cancer and women a 37.7% chance. That means more than one in three people will be diagnosed with some form of these diseases in their lifetime. Where the statistic becomes even more important for retirees is that about 77% of all cancers are diagnosed in people 55 or older, and the median age for cancer diagnosis is 66. The good news is that according to the ACS , there has been a significant decrease in canc...