Prostate cancer's day in the sun

doi:10.1136/bmj.a1249

Published 11 August 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a1249
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a1249

Letters

New prostate cancer drug

Prostate cancer’s day in the sun

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Recently we and others have studied different anti-cancer drugsin patients with castration resistant prostate cancer (CRPC),including HER2 targeting drugs, pan-ErbB inhibitors, histonedeacetylase inhibitors, anti-angiogenics, a survivin antisense,and several new cytotoxics.¹ ² In none of these trials havewe observed anything like the biochemical, radiological, and,importantly, symptomatic benefit reported with abiraterone acetate.

The results of our phase I study have been confirmed by a secondphase I study in North America and four phase II studies runby our team and several North American investigators. Thesestudies were recently presented at the American Society of ClinicalOncology annual meeting held in Chicago³ ⁴ ⁵ and will be publishedover the next year. The results remain preliminary and requireconfirmation in an ongoing 1180 patient phase III study, butthey are very encouraging and anticipate that further therapeutictargeting of the androgen receptor signalling axis in CRPC canachieve disease . . . [Full text of this article]

Gerhardt Attard, clinical research fellow¹, Alison H Reid, clinical research fellow¹, David Dearnaley, consultant clinical oncologist¹, Johann S De Bono, consultant medical oncologist¹

¹ Institute for Cancer Research, Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, Sutton SM2 5PT

gerhardt.attard@icr.ac.uk