New drug for prostate cancer ... eventually ... maybe - July 23, 2008
Posted on behalf of Heidi Ledford
It's amazing what a good personal story can do to crank up the impact of medical reporting. Today held a couple of such stories amidst the flurry of articles about a potential treatment for prostate cancer.
Yesterday, I’d had a quick look at the Journal of Clinical Oncology paper that spurred the flurry. The first thing I saw was this: “n=21”. Twenty-one subjects is a reasonable size for a phase I trial, but I’ve developed a reluctance to write about a miracle cancer cure until the numbers get a bit higher. Today, however, there were several articles that made n=21 sound much more meaningful. The BBC, the Times, and the Daily Mail all started off their coverage with moving personal accounts of dramatic results in men who’d been told to prepare themselves for death.
The drug, called abiraterone acetate, works by inhibiting a protein called cytochrome P 17 (CYP17) that is involved in making male sex hormones called androgens. The hope is that the drug will work in men whose cancers don’t respond to castration. Castration eliminates the production of testosterone in the gonads, but androgens produced elsewhere may continue to stimulate the cancer. Most deaths from prostate cancer occur due to these castration-resistant forms. (More general info on prostate cancer here.)
Many of the articles that I saw noted the small sample size, though a few didn’t (Reuters). Also, to my knowledge, the drug’s efficacy hasn’t been directly compared with chemotherapy. But the authors say that they’ve already completed phase II trials and a 1200 person study is ongoing (Sky News), so we may not have too much longer to wait to get a clearer answer.
Comments
I had a radical prostatectomy in2000 and was clean until it returned in 2007. Now I continue to have a PSA of .3, I'm concern it will "take off".
Will this drug help me get rid of it once and for all?
JMM
Posted by: James Martin | July 23, 2008 02:23 AM
When a cancer, e.g. prostate cancer, is initiated, we must threat it, obviously, at our best. However, since Oncological Terrain and INHERITED Oncological Real Risk,in our case, in prostate gland, are conditio sine qua non of malignancy occurrence, we have to treat also such as predisposition,otherwise persisting all life long; See my website, and www.nature.com, URLs http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2008/07/newsweak_darwin_vs_lincoln.html#comments
http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/07/product_placement.html#comments
http://network.nature.com/forums/askthenatureeditor/1846?page=1#reply-5181 ; http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/05/our_new_columns_narrowing_the.html#comments , and specially http://blogs.nature.com/nm/spoonful/2008/04/stress_as_a_therapy_1.html#comments
In addition, all physicians agree with the statement "The best therapy is primary prevention". Nowadays, it is possible prevent the majority of cancers... if physians decide to LEARN bot Oncoogical Terrain "and" Inherited Oncological Real Risk!
Posted by: Sergio Stagnaro MD | July 23, 2008 09:28 AM