Today’s news reports contain items on:
- Racial disparities in 10-year survival, even in specialized clinical trials
- Sunitinib + docetaxel in treatment of CRPC
- Docetaxel + ABT-751 in treatment of CRPC
Albain et al. have shown that African American patients with sex-specific cancers (including prostate cancer) had worse survival than white patients, despite enrollment on phase III clinical trials (with uniform stage, treatment, and follow-up) carried out by the Southwest Oncology Group (SWOG). In the case of prostate cancer, 10-year (and median) overall survival rates for African Americans was 6 percent (2.2 years) compared to 9 percent (2.7 years) for all other patients, so neither group of patients was doing particularly well, which is a comment on the 10-year survival of patients with advanced forms of prostate cancer in general.
A recent report by Sonpavde et al. has suggested that, “Sunitinib malate demonstrated promising activity in metastatic CRPC progressing after prior docetaxel.” We should pioint out, however, that lother reports have already suggested that sunitinib (Sutent) is unlikley to have clinically significant impact in treatmnent of men with castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) who have progressed after docetaxel therapy. Even in the current study, nearly 53 percent of the patients discontinued drug therapy as a consequence of toxic side effects.
Michels et al. have investigated the activity of ABT-751, a novel sulfonamide antimitotic and vascular disrupting agent, in combination with docetaxel in patients with CRPC. At a dose of 200 mg/day for 14 days, ABT-751 appears to be safe and to induce some degree of clinical activity. Phase II trials of docetaxel + ABT-751 will be carried out using docetaxel at a dose of 60 mg/m2 and ABT-751 at 200 mg/day.
Filed under: Drugs in development, Management, Treatment, Uncategorized | Tagged: ABT-751, docetaxel, racial disparities, sunitinib, survival
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