DTMT Network

Patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer are living significantly longer, primarily due to advancements in the approved therapies over the past decade, researchers of a large randomised trial, who tested a new treatment said.

The trial, results of which were published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology recently, were conducted by the researchers of the SWOG Cancer Research Network, a cancer clinical trials group, tested the efficacy of the drug orteronel, a novel hormonal therapy pairing it with androgen deprivation therapy on the investigational arm and comparing that combination to androgen deprivation therapy plus bicalutamide.

Though the trial failed to meet the endpoint of 33% overall survival in the controlled arm of the study, where the patients of hormone-sensitive metastatic prostate cancer patients were given androgen deprivation therapy combined with bicalutamide, showed a median overall survival of 70 months, which is a 24-month improvement over the previous study conducted in 2013, the researchers said.

“We are seeing the benefit of the advancements made in advanced prostate cancer therapy in the last decade, resulting in unprecedented improvements in survival of men with advanced prostate cancer in general, which is great news for our patients,”  the lead author of the study, Dr Neeraj Agarwal, a SWOG investigator with the Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah said.

More than 77% of control arm patients whose cancer progressed went on to get additional life-prolonging treatment after finishing the trial therapy, compared to 61% in the orteronel arm, the researchers of the study wrote in their paper.