About Advanced Prostate Cancer

Prostate Cancer Overview

According to the American Cancer Society, in the United States, prostate cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among men other than skin cancer. The American Cancer Society estimates that, in the United States during 2014, approximately 233,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed, and approximately29,000 men will die from the disease. Overall, in the United States, about one in seven men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime, and about one in 36 men will die from the disease.

Prostate cancer is most frequently diagnosed at an early stage, when it is confined to the prostate gland and its immediate surroundings. Advances in screening and diagnosis, including the widespread use of Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) screening, have allowed detection of the disease in its early stages in approximately 85 percent of all cases diagnosedin the United States. Patients with early-stage disease are typically treated with surgery or radiation therapy, or in limited circumstances, with both.

For the majority of men, these procedures are successful in curing the disease. However, for others, these procedures are not curative and their prostate cancer ultimately recurs. Men with recurrent prostate cancer are considered to have advanced prostate cancer. In addition, about 15 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer have metastatic disease at the time of diagnosis. Men with metastatic disease are also considered to have advanced prostate cancer. Men with advanced prostate cancer are most often treated with drug therapy.

Treatment of Advanced Prostate Cancer

The growth and survival of prostate cancer tumor cells depend primarily on the functioning of the androgen receptor signaling pathway. The pathway is ordinarily activated by the binding of androgens, such as testosterone and DHT, to the ligand binding domain of androgen receptors in prostate cancer cells. Once binding has occurred, the bound androgen/androgen receptor complex passes into the nucleus of the tumor cell where it binds to DNA in the cancer cell, triggering abnormal cell growth and tumor progression.

Because testosterone fuels prostate cancer growth, first-line therapy for advanced prostate cancer typically entails androgen deprivation therapy, or ADT, with luteinizing hormone releasing hormone, or LHRH. ADT reduces testosterone to levels that are commensurate with the levels of a male who has had surgical castration to minimize the testosterone that would otherwise fuel prostate cancer growth. Early-stage patients who receive and respond to this treatment are considered to have hormone-sensitive prostate cancer. ADT has been the principal option for the initial treatment of advanced prostate cancer for more than 50 years.

Most advanced prostate cancer patients initially respond to ADT. However, after initiation of ADT, almost all advanced prostate cancer patients experience a recurrence in tumor growth despite the reduction of testosterone to castrate levels. These patients are considered to be “castration resistant.” The development of castration resistant prostate cancer (”CRPC”) following initiation of ADT is due in part to tumor cells that have adapted to the hormone-deprived environment of the prostate and is generally diagnosed based on either rising levels of PSA or disease progression as evidenced by imaging tests or clinical symptoms.

During the course of ADT or following diagnosis of CRPC, most patients are treated with anti-androgens, which block the binding of androgens to the androgen receptor. Like LHRH analogs, the anti-androgens suppress tumor growth for a period of time in many CRPC patients. However, almost all CRPC patients develop resistance to anti-androgen therapy. The initial hormonal treatments like LHRH analogs are referred to as primary hormonal treatments.

Prior to 2010, the next line of treatment for patients who became resistant to primary hormonal treatment with LHRH analogs and anti-androgens was chemotherapy. Since 2010, the FDA has approved five new agents for the treatment of patients with CRPC. However, despite the approval of new therapies, there continues to be an unmet need as there are patient populations that are not effectively addressed by these therapies, such as CRPC patients with C-terminal loss.