GENITOURINARY CANCERS

Joe O'Sullivan, MD, on utilizing radium-223 treatment earlier in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

Several recent trials have shown that a combination of docetaxel in conjunction with androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is optimal in treating oligometastatic prostate cancer.

From its approval in May 2013 to recently being considered as a combination treatment with other drugs, radium-223 dichloride shows great potential in positively impacting treatment for mCRPC, according to Dr. Michael Morris.

Aaron Spitz, MD, talks about the emerging uses of telemedicine in urology. Telemedicine allows medical professionals to remotely diagnose and sometimes even treat patients through a variety of technology, including smartphones and tablet devices.

"We should be doing this, because we understand the disease, we see these patients, and we're not just surgeons, Dr. Adam Kibel said. "We were giving them medications to control their BPH before we diagnosed them with cancer."

With novel treatments such as abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) and enzalutamide (Xtandi) emerging and financial challenges of diminished reimbursement faced by urology practices mounting, urology groups are beginning to offer in-office dispensing to their metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) patients.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meat as carcinogenic to humans and red meat as probably carcinogenic to humans.

Patients who had prostate cancer recurrence after radical prostatectomy lived significantly longer with the addition of hormonal therapy to salvage radiotherapy, long-term follow-up from a randomized trial showed.

Ultra-hypofractionated radiation therapy for low-risk prostate cancer led to significantly lower rates of bowel and urinary dysfunction compared with patients treated with conventional radiotherapy regimens.

Hypofractionated radiotherapy can achieve similar cure rates with similar side effects compared with conventional radiotherapy for men with low-risk, early prostate cancer, according to a recent study.

The FDA has announced clearance for a minimally invasive high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) prostate tissue ablation device called Sonablate 450, making HIFU available in the United States for the first time.

Researchers note that chronic Hedgehog (Hh) pathway stimulation has been shown in prostate, lung, and ovarian cancers, and that zinc levels decrease early in prostate cancer continuing to castration-resistant disease. Researchers are exploring whether or not zinc may suppress the autocatalysis in the Hh precursor and inhibit production of biologically active Hh ligand.

Telesta Therapeutics has been granted an FDA advisory hearing to discuss the biologics license application of its MCNA immunotherapy as treatment for high-risk nonmuscle invasive bladder cancer following first-line bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG).

Tasquinimod demonstrated promise in phase II trials but failed to improve overall survival in a phase III trial in treatment-naive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer; some experts believe this failure highlights the need for more intelligent clinical trial designs in prostate cancer.

Accelerated hypofractionated radiotherapy using a schedule of 60 Gy in 20 fractions of 3 Gy delivered in 4 weeks was found to be comparable to the conventional schedule of 74 Gy/37 of 2 GY delivered in 7.2 weeks in patients with localized prostate cancer taking androgen deprivation therapy.

Androgen deprivation therapy has been the standard of care for patients with advanced prostate cancer (PC), because these agents inhibit cancer progression in the early stages of disease.

A subanalysis of the ALSYMPCA trial suggests that chemotherapy can be safely administered after treatment with radium-223 in patients with metastatic CRPC and bone metastasis.

Neal D. Shore, MD, FACS, Atlantic Urology Clinics, discusses glypican-1 as a biomarker for prostate cancer.

Howard M. Sandler, MD, MS, FASTRO, Cedars Sinai, discusses patient benefit and toxicities of a phase III study of docetaxel with hormonal and radiation therapy of patients with prostate cancer.

The risk of death for patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) was reduced by 27% with nivolumab (Opdivo) versus everolimus (Afinitor), and overall survival (OS) was improved by 5.4 months.

Compared with everolimus, second-line treatment with cabozantinib (Cometriq) reduced the risk of progression or death by 42% in patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC)

Fred Saad, MD, FRCS, University of Montreal, discusses the benefit of radium-223 for the treatment of patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC).

Targeted Oncology spoke with two leading experts in the prostate cancer field about the range of available treatments and their current applications in men with mCRPC.

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) have been recognized as a potential source of prostate cancer seeding to distant metastatic sites (typically bone) for over a century.

Bone metastases in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC) can invade a range of sites in the skeleton where they precipitate a spectrum of pathological processes that increase morbidity, negatively affect quality of life, and decrease survival.