Dr. Wise on AR-Directed Therapy for Prostate Cancer

David R. Wise, MD, PhD, assistant professor, Department of Medicine, assistant professor, Department of Urology, NYU Langone's Perlmutter Cancer Center, discusses advancements with androgen receptor (AR)-directed therapy for patients with prostate cancer.

According to Wise, the use of abiraterone acetate (Zytiga) with prednisone created a lot of buzz at the 2017 ASCO Annual Meeting. It is an approved agent for patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC), whether pre- or post-chemotherapy; however, what wasn't clear was whether the use of it in patients who were newly diagnosed or recurrent with non—castration-resistant prostate cancer with high-risk features would be beneficial.

Results from the phase III LATITUDE trial demonstrated that the addition of abiraterone plus prednisone to androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) lowered the risk of death by 38% in patients with newly diagnosed, high-risk, metastatic prostate cancer. In the STAMPEDE trial, which consisted of a broader population of high-risk hormone-naïve patients including some participants with nonmetastatic disease, results showed that the addition of abiraterone to standard initial therapy lowered the relative risk of death by 37% and improved the progression-free survival by 71%.