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Men's Health

Chemotherapy Options for Prostate Cancer

Summary & Participants

Traditionally, chemotherapy had almost no role in treating prostate cancer. But today, new chemotherapy drugs have been proven to not only provide symptom relief, but also extend the lives of patients with advanced prostate cancer.

Medically Reviewed On: July 18, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: Some drugs used added to docetaxel are biologic agents, which target the blood supply to cancer cells.

TOMASZ BEER, MD: Most of the exciting new drugs that are being added to it are not conventional chemotherapy drugs, but novel drugs that we consider so-called biologic agents: drugs that target various activities or parts of the cancer that we think may give us an advantage. So drugs that target the cancer’s ability to resist chemotherapy, the cancer’s ability to grow its own blood supply.

ANNOUNCER: Another promising agent tested in combination with chemotherapy is a vitamin D compound.

TOMASZ BEER, MD: It turns out that cancer has receptors for activated vitamin D, which is calcitriol, and I’ll call it calcitriol from now on. And in the lab, calcitriol can cause cancer to die, stop it from growing, and is synergistic with chemotherapy agents, including docetaxel.

And what we found was, there was a significant difference in survival in favor of the combination. So the median survival in patients treated with docetaxel alone was about 16.5 months, and the median survival for the combination arm hadn’t been reached as of the last analysis, but is estimated at 24.5 months.

ANNOUNCER: There is no cure for advanced prostate cancer, but oncologists are confident that more advances in treatment are on the way.

TOMASZ BEER, MD: I think there’s never been a better time to be a prostate cancer researcher. We have so many new drugs that hold promise, and really the most frustrating thing is how long it takes to get the answers. Both our patients and we are impatient and we would like to know right now what’s going to help, and how can we move forward.

CELESTIA S. HIGANO, MD: The nice thing about being my age is that I got to live through the era when there was supposedly nothing we could do with chemotherapy to a time when we can offer chemotherapy to most patients and feel very good about the kinds of improvements we see in their quality of life.

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