‘Once in a career feeling’ as trial shows offering prostate cancer drug earlier improves survival

In 2012, the drug abiraterone (Zytiga) was first made available on the NHS to treat men with advanced prostate cancer that has stopped responding to standard hormone treatment. Now, a strong case is being made for the drug to be made available to even more men with prostate cancer. According to results from the Cancer Research UK-funded STAMPEDE clinical trial, offering abiraterone plus prednisolone in combination with standard therapy to men with prostate cancer earlier, before the disease becomes resistant to standard hormone therapy, can help boost survival. That’s the take home message from new findings presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting in Chicago in the US. The results of the trial, also published recently in the New England Journal of Medicine, show that giving this combination to men whose prostate cancer has spread, or has a high risk of doing so, extends their lives. Experts have said the results could be practice-changing. So what would this mean for men with prostate cancer?

See original article at: https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2017/06/06/once-in-a-career-feeling-as-trial-shows-offering-prostate-cancer-drug-earlier-improves-survival/