Naomi Haas, MD

Naomi Haas, MD, director, Prostate and Kidney Cancer Program, associate professor, Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the current areas of ongoing research in the treatment landscape for patients with prostate cancer, specifically metastatic castration-resistant disease.

There are several studies exploring bispecific T-cell engager (BiTE) therapies, which is different from other approaches as it allows for repeat dosing that could be an advantage or disadvantage to the patient. Haas says the advantage to BiTE therapy is that the therapy can be generated and don’t need to be made specific.

The CART trials, exploring adoptive chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapies, are patient-specific, so to make a CART, patients must undergo apheresis to remove the T cells, then the T cells are infected with the lentivirus, Haas says. The BiTE therapies are generated more synthetically.

Lutetium is in between in terms of research as there are little data on a second set of repeat dosing. At this time, Haas says CART is where physicians think of 1 dose or maybe a second retreatment dose, lutetium is between 2 and 4 doses, and BiTE therapy is given more chronically to patients.

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Naomi Haas, MD, discusses the current areas of ongoing research in the treatment landscape for patients with prostate cancer.

Exploring New Treatment Options in Prostate Cancer Landscape

Naomi Haas, MD, director, Prostate and Kidney Cancer Program, associate professor, Medicine, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, discusses the importance of using PSMA, an antigen that is expressed on the cell surface, for the detection of prostate cancer.

PSMA is widely expressed in prostate tissue in cancer, and it isn’t well expressed in normal tissue, Haas says. For that reason, PSMA is a good target because there aren’t as many toxicity concerns with it.

In normal tissue, PSMA is part of the neurotransmission of things, and in intestinal tissue, it helps with folate transfer. People aren’t sure what its function is in prostate tissue, says Haas. However, it an area of important interest at this time based on its high level of expression in prostate cancer.

Naomi Haas, MD, discusses the importance of using PSMA, an antigen that is expressed on the cell surface, for the detection of prostate cancer.

Naomi Haas, MD | Authors

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Exploring New Treatment Options in Prostate Cancer Landscape

PSMA Plays Important Role in the Detection of Prostate Cancer