VIDEO: The challenges of treating advanced prostate cancer

Editor’s note: This is a previously posted video, and the below is an automatically generated transcript to be used for informational purposes. Please notify cperla@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Main challenge is that the outcomes with respect to cure rates are fairly low. And I think we need to continue to develop new approaches and new drugs and new tools to try to improve the long-term cure rates for these patients. Firstly, patients where the cancer is outside the prostate but still localized within the area. Either it's invading into the fat around the prostate or in the structure surrounding the prostate or in localized lymph nodes.

I think we need to better develop strategies for patients with what this would be considered "locally advanced prostate cancer." So, how do we sequence the treatments we currently have? How do we add the newer drugs available to optimize the outcomes in these patients? One treatment alone doesn't seem to work very well for these patients. So what can we do to sequence the treatments we have to optimize the outcomes?

What drugs can we give before localized treatment? What localized treatments should we offer? Is there anything we should do for these patients after treatment to minimize the chance of recurrence? So I think these are all areas that are being explored for advanced prostate cancer. We know that in metastatic prostate cancer, where the cancer has spread outside the area of the prostate, there have been great advances in the last several years and drugs seem to improve survival in those patients by several months.

But again, I think we're not curing a lot of these patients. So what can we do to continue to develop tools and approaches to optimize the long-term cure for these patients? And one thing we don't understand is in patients with metastatic cancer, is there any benefit to treating the prostate in those patients?

Whether that's surgically or with radiation. There are ongoing studies looking at this question. Does treatment of the localized area benefit the patient? We don't quite know for sure. And does it avoid problems down the road with respect to urination and so on? So I think those questions need to be answered for us to best treat these patients.