7th Annual IPCC to Advance Multidisciplinary Care for Prostate Cancer

Leonard G. Gomella, MD

Insights about PSA screening, genomics, and what’s new in the areas of imaging, antiandrogen therapy, radiation therapy, immunotherapy, and radiopharmaceuticals will be offered during the 7th Annual Interdisciplinary Prostate Cancer Congress (IPCC) at Manhattan’s Crowne Plaza Times Square.

Rounding out the one-day conference will be two moderated case-based discussions structured to resemble multidisciplinary tumor boards.

The aim of the annual conference is to provide concise updates on best practices, investigational strategies, trends, and emerging data relevant to community urologists and medical, surgical, and radiation oncologists—helping to inform and sustain well-rounded teams in the treatment of the disease. This year’s conference will include discussions of state-of-the-art treatments, guidelines, controversies, and clinical challenges, as well as question-and-answer sessions.

The educational activity is open not only to physicians who treat prostate cancer, but also to fellows, nurse practitioners, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, and other healthcare professionals interested in the disease.

One of the conference’s three co-chairs, Leonard G. Gomella, MD, FACS, said that the value of the event is its focus on practical applications of recent developments in the field.

“The focus of the meeting is not theoretical,” he said. “It’s a practical understanding of all the changes going on now in the field of prostate cancer. There are changes occurring at all levels, from initial diagnosis to treatment of advanced disease, and a conference like this allows direct interaction with thought leaders who not only write and do research, but are providers who work every day in the area. It’s an opportunity for participants to ask questions and understand how much we know and don’t know. When they go back to the patient setting, they can actually use [this information] in their daily patient care.”

Gomella is the Bernard W. Godwin professor of Prostate Cancer at Jefferson Medical College, and is associate director and chairman of the Department of Urology at the Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The conference will have two additional co-chairs:

• Daniel P. Petrylak, MD, professor of Medicine, Medical Oncology director, and Prostate and GU Medical Oncology director of the Prostate Cancer Translational Research Program at the Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut; and
• A. Oliver Sartor, MD, Laborde Professor of Cancer Research in the Medicine and Urology Departments at the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana.

In addition, three faculty members will be part of the event:

• E. David Crawford, MD, professor of Urologic and Radiation Oncology and head of the Section of Urologic Oncology at the University of Colorado at Denver and its hospital. He is also chairman and founder of the Prostate Conditions Education Council in Denver;
• Robert Dreicer, MD, MS, FACP, FASCO, professor of Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine and chairman of the Department of Solid Tumor Oncology at the Cleveland Clinuic’s Taussig Cancer Institute; and
• Peter B. Schiff, MD, PhD, FASTRO, professor and vice chairman of the Department of Radiation Oncology at the NYU School of Medicine in New York City.

In addition to moderating part of the day, Gomella will address practical considerations in prostate cancer care during the meeting, focusing on androgen deprivation therapy and management of the side effects that can come with keeping testosterone levels low for long periods of time.

Petrylak, meanwhile, will review the year’s developments and trends in prostate cancer; give a therapeutic overview of castration-resistant prostate cancer (CPRC); speak about novel imaging modalities; and take part in the two debates on challenging cases with the other co-chairs and faculty—one in the active surveillance setting and the other focused on best practices for advanced disease.

Petrylak will suggest that “we need to be rethinking how and when we image patients with advanced prostate cancer, since early recognition of metastatic prostate cancer is important and may lead to improved survival,” Gomella said.

Metastatic CRPC is “one of the hottest topics out there right now,” Gomella continued. “We’ve had unprecedented approvals for drugs for advanced CRPC in the last 3 years, and one of the big things that Dr. Petrylak will talk about will be the latest data on the PREVAIL study (of pre-chemotherapy enzalutamide presented at the 2014 Genitourinary Cancers Symposium), showing that (this strategy) has many advantages in survival and delaying chemotherapy, and (sparks) overall improvement in progression-free survival, which is very significant. This drug, while not currently approved in the pre-chemotherapy setting, will cause a lot of physicians to rethink the issue of when to use different medicines in patients with advanced prostate cancer.”

Sartor will discuss PSA screening and novel radiopharmaceuticals for CRPC. The screening talk will address the “ongoing PSA controversy and whether any new information has been available since 2 years ago, when the US Preventive Services Task Force said not to screen for prostate cancer,” Gomella said. “Dr. Sartor will talk about the impact of what that has meant for patients with prostate cancer and their providers.”

The talk on radiopharmaceuticals will focus mainly on updated information regarding the use of radium-223 in advanced prostate cancer, Gomella added.

Crawford’s presentations will focus on biopsy of prostate cancer and state-of-the-art prostate cancer genomics.

“Dr. Crawford is going to address the latest approaches to prostate biopsy, including mapping biopsies and what’s going on in the field of MRI fusion biopsies, which allow us to much more accurately diagnose and classify prostate cancer,” Gomella said. Crawford will give the genomics talk because “it’s largely underappreciated and also not completely understood by most practitioners exactly how genomics or the new FDA-approved genetic tests fit in at different stages of prostate cancer,” Gomella added. “The opportunities for using genomics to help with decision-making go from early prostate cancer and consideration for active surveillance through what to do for patients with high-risk prostate cancer and administering adjuvant radiation therapy.”

Dreicer will contribute by discussing novel antiandrogen therapies for CRPC—such as ARN-509—and immunotherapeutic approaches for prostate cancer.

In the immunotherapy talk, Dreicer will discuss the FDA-approved drug sipuleucel-T (Provenge), Gomella said. “I think as urologists and medical oncologists understand where to use sipuleucel-T in the continuum of care with patients with prostate cancer, they’ll realize that immunotherapy has landed an important place in the management of prostate cancer,” he said.

In addition to sipuleucel-T, which has been part of the approval arsenal against prostate cancer for nearly 4 years, “there are other forms of immunotherapy which are under development, including vaccinia virus- or fowlpox-based immunotherapy strategies and other DNA-based anti-tumor strategies,” Gomella added. “Sipuleucel-T is the FDA-approved go-to now, but there also will be other agents out there that are under study now and may have some clinical applications in the not-too-distant future.”

Beyond Dreicer’s presentation on the subject, an industry-sponsored lunchtime talk that is not part of the formal meeting will offer details on the basics of immunotherapy, Gomella noted.

Finally, Schiff will share thoughts on what’s new in radiation therapy.

“It’s not just a urology-centric meeting,” Gomella concluded. “It’s designed to cover all of the new aspects [of interdisciplinary care] that are going on with prostate cancer.”

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