Prostate cancer strikes 1 out of 8 U.S. men, and it is expected to take more than 34,000 lives this year alone. When it metastasizes, the disease is almost always incurable, leaving physicians focused only on postponing death and improving patients’ lives.
A promising new approach has succeeded at both goals — and did so among men with an advanced form of the disease whose condition had deteriorated despite receiving standard treatments.
In fact, it more than doubled how long patients lived without their cancer worsening, according to a paper published in September. The study, which followed 831 men in 10 countries for a median of 20 months, compared patients who continued to receive standard care with ones who got the new treatment.
The treatment’s name is complex: lutetium-177-PSMA-617. But its approach is straightforward: Drive radiation directly into a cancer cell while sparing healthy tissue around it.
The method uses a compound called PSMA-617 to hone in on a protein found almost exclusively in prostate cancer cells, explains Oliver Sartor, MD, study co-lead investigator and medical director of Tulane Cancer Center in New Orleans. Then, a radioactive particle carried by the compound blasts the cancer cells, wherever they are.
“It’s like a little smart bomb,” says Sartor.
In September, the FDA granted the treatment priority review status, according to drug manufacturer Novartis, which funded the study. An answer is expected in the first half of 2022.
Sartor feels hopeful. “I’ve been working in prostate cancer for more than 30 years, and this is the largest advance I’ve ever been associated with.”
