Why do men get prostate cancer?

The answer to this question, some 70 to 80 years after we started to see if we could answer it, is still: “We haven’t got a clue.” But every so often people come up with a new or a revised hypothesis, and it can take years to work out whether each specific hypothesis is viable. … READ MORE …

The importance of listening to patients

A report yesterday on on the MedPage Today web site quotes Scott Gottlieb, MD, the Commissioner of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) on the importance of “Listening to patients” and on how patients’ perspectives can inform drug development, drug review, and physicians’ prescribing habits. … READ MORE …

What is “Prostac” and where can you get it?

Someone asked the sitemaster yesterday about a new test for risk of prostate cancer called Prostac® and where he could access this. … READ MORE …

Minnelide: a possible new drug for the treatment of CRPC?

According to a recently published article in The Prostate, researchers at the University of Minnesota have developed a new type of drug that they believe may have high therapeutic potential in the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC). … READ MORE …

“Competitive analysis” in the development of drugs for advanced prostate cancer

So the other morning your sitemaster learned that a relatively new FirstWord Therapy Report had come out that dealt with future use of biopharmaceuticals in the treatment of progressive and advanced prostate cancer. … READ MORE …

The history of the clinical trials process

Readers with an interest in how we got to today’s clinical trials processes for evaluating new drugs for the treatment of prostate cancer and other diseases might be surprised by what’s in an article in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. … READ MORE …

Effective, safe, and as fast as reasonably possible

For readers who are interested in the processes and the speed with which potential new cancer drugs can be brought to market here in the USA (and other places around the world too), there in an important article in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. … READ MORE …

What’s a clonal neoantigen when it’s at home? And why is it important?

Many readers of this blog will be aware of the development of immunotherapies like sipuleucel-T (Provenge), CAR-T for the treatment of leukemias, and checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of some forms of solid tumor (lung cancers, melanoma). … READ MORE …

Master gene reprogramming and the development of prostate cancer

According to an hypothesis just published by a group of researchers at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, they have identified “a new epigenetic program occurring as you transition from normal to tumor cells” in the development of prostate cancer. … READ MORE …

Patient-reported outcomes and prostate cancer drug development

There is an excellent opinion piece in this this week’s New England Journal of Medicine that addresses the need for greater focus on patient-reported outcomes in the development of drugs for the treatment of cancer. … READ MORE …

Future development of abiraterone acetate in treatment of prostate cancer

Just as we have provided a recent update on the future potential of enzalutamide (MDV3100) in the treatment of prostate cancer, the following offers an update on the future potential of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga®). … READ MORE …

Why would anyone develop new drugs if international patent law can just be ignored?

There are two ways to look at a ruling issued yesterday by the Indian controller general of patents, designs and trademarks: it can either be seen as a major victory for patients who had no prior hope of treatment with a highly effective anticancer agent because of its cost … or it can be seen as an international setback to the entire concept of patent and intellectual property law. … READ MORE …

Out on the frontiers of research on the genetics of cancer

For those who like to know what is happening out on the farther reaches of cancer research, there is an interesting article by George Johnson in today’s New York Times. … READ MORE …

What’s in the future pipeline for treatment of mCRPC?

Over the past year we have provided readers with extensive information about some of the new forms of therapy such as abiraterone acetate, MDV3100, TAK-700, and others that have shown great promise and are already in Phase III clinical trials for post-chemotherapy and chemotherapy-naive, metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC). … READ MORE …

Gene fusion and prostate cancer development

An article in today’s Israel Herald might give you the (incorrect) idea that androgen deprivation therapy is completely inappropriate as a  form of treatment for prostate cancer. … READ M\ORE …