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22 July 2008
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Drug hope for men with aggressive prostate cancer
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MedWire News: Men with aggressive prostate cancer could soon benefit from an effective drug to treat their disease if the encouraging results from an initial study are confirmed by further research, say UK scientists.
The drug, called abiraterone, could prove to be an effective treatment for up to 80% of men with aggressive prostate cancer who have failed to respond to other drug treatments, says the team from the Institute of Cancer Research in Sutton, Surrey.
Lead researcher Dr Johann de Bono and team studied 21 men with aggressive, drug-resistant prostate cancer who were assigned to take daily abiraterone, which blocks the hormones responsible for fuelling prostate tumours.
After a monitoring period of more than 2 years, the team found that 70-80% of the patients showed significant reductions in their levels of prostate-specific antigen - a protein that indicates prostate tumour growth - and significant reductions in the size of their tumours.
Furthermore, abiraterone appeared to have few side effects and a number of patients were able to stop taking morphine for the relief of bone pain.
"These men have very aggressive prostate cancer which is exceptionally difficult to treat and almost always proves to be fatal. We hope that abiraterone will eventually offer them real hope of an effective way of managing their condition and prolonging their lives," said Dr de Bono.
He added: "It is envisioned that this drug will be available for general use from 2011 and we hope it can become widely available. In the interim, it is available through clinical trials only."
Commenting on the findings, John Neate, chief executive of the Prostate Cancer Charity in the UK, said: "Early trial results of abiraterone potentially represent the first significant advance in drug treatment of prostate cancer for some time. This is an exciting development which has been eagerly anticipated."
He added: "We look forward to the results of the larger trials already underway or being planned for this drug to prove its potential effectiveness for the thousands of men diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer every year in the UK."
The research is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
J Clin Oncol 2008: Advance online publication
http://jco.ascopubs.org/
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