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| health information | health news

New hope for prostate cancer

25 July 2008

These early results are extremely exciting

Professor Malcolm Mason, Cardiff University School of Medicine

Key facts

Advanced prostate cancer is when the cancer has spread beyond the prostate gland to other parts of the body, such as the lymph glands, bones or liver.
Up to 10,000 men in Britain are diagnosed each year with the aggressive type of prostate cancer that the drug targets.
The trial was conducted by the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital.
All the patients involved in the trial had an aggressive form of prostate cancer in which the tumour tissue is believed to be able to produce its own supply of the hormones which make the tumour grow.
Abiraterone works by stopping the production of male hormones in all tissues.

A new drug has been discovered that could potentially treat advanced prostate cancer, according to results from a trial published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology. The research has been hailed as potentially "the first significant advance in drug treatment of prostate cancer for some time," by John Neate, Chief Executive of The Prostate Cancer Charity.

The research is in its early stages yet results indicate that the drug - abiraterone - could treat the most aggressive type of prostate cancer when it has spread.

Abiraterone was found to shrink tumours and lead to dramatic falls in prostate specific antigen (PSA) levels in up to 80 percent of advanced prostate cancer patients. PSA is a protein associated with prostate cancer activity.

This type of cancer has previously not responded to treatment with drugs. Lead researcher, Dr Johann de Bono, said, "These men have very aggressive prostate cancer which is exceptionally difficult to treat and almost always proves to be fatal."

In aggressive forms of prostate cancer, scientists believe the tumour produces its own supply of hormones to grow. Existing drugs only stop the testicles producing hormones. But Dr de Bono explained that abiraterone also blocks the production of hormones elsewhere in the body, including in the cancer itself.

The researchers tested the blood of 21 patients with advanced prostate cancer to see if there was a reduction in the blood level of PSA after taking the drug. CT scans, MRI scans and bone scans were used to see if the tumours got smaller after treatment.

Patients were monitored for up to two-and-a-half years and with continued use of abiraterone, they were apparently able to control their disease with few side-effects. A number of patients were able to stop taking morphine to relieve bone pain.

Dr Sally Burtles, director of drug development for Cancer Research UK, believes abiraterone has "potential to make a real difference to men with an aggressive form of prostate cancer".

However, Professor Malcolm Mason, of Cardiff University School of Medicine, cautioned, "These early results are extremely exciting but there's a lot more work needed to establish what abiraterone's place will be in treating men with prostate cancer. At the moment the studies are being done on a small number of men with very advanced disease so it's much too early to say what role the drug might have in treating others with earlier stage prostate cancer. We need the results of a much larger study to see if this early promise will be fulfilled."