Dr. Burgess on Immunotherapy in Prostate Cancer

Earle Burgess, MD, associate professor of medicine, Levine Cancer Institute, discusses the role of immunotherapy in prostate cancer.

Immunotherapy has been shown to dramatically improve outcomes for patients with genitourinary malignancies like bladder cancer and renal cell carcinoma, but now, it seems that this approach can be beneficial for those with prostate cancer as well.

New data presented at the 2018 ASCO Annual Meeting showed that a small subset of patients with advanced prostate cancer can benefit from this treatment approach, particularly those who have microsatellite instability high tumors or tumors expressing homologous recombinant deficiency and DNA mismatch repair defects, Burgess says.

Researchers are also learning more about the role of CDK12 in prostate cancer, he adds. It seems apparent that CDK12 aberrations are associated with sensitivity to immunotherapy, but this has not yet been proven in clinical trials. These characteristics are of low incidence, but Burgess concludes there may be an expanded role for checkpoint inhibitors in the treatment of CDK12-mutated tumors.