Video
Recent Progress in the Prostate Cancer Treatment Landscape
Key opinion leaders provide a broad perspective on recent shifts in the treatment landscape for prostate cancer.
Transcript:
Alan Bryce, MD: Dr Heath, generally, how has the treatment landscape for prostate cancer evolved in recent years? All of us on this call have been doing it for several years, and it is different today than it was even 3 years ago, let alone 5 or 10. But where do you see, in terms of new treatment options, the greatest progress being made?
Elisabeth Heath, MD, FACP: We’ve been talking about it with PSMA [prostate-specific membrane antigen]-based treatment. The theragnostic approach after we diagnose, and we do a lot of handwringing about what to do with what’s been seen or not seen; you can’t unsee what you just saw. It’s making for very robust MGT [multidisciplinary team] meetings in most hospitals and institutes, but also in practice. There’s excitement that when patients and physicians see the target, and now there’s a drug to get to the target, there’s a sense of satisfaction with that. The world of genomic sequencing has already changed what we do. I think it’s now, what do we do with this information? We’re asking harder and deeper questions, and that’s exciting because it’s great for a group of drugs, but there will be more coming that will also use this type of approach. Even just with single agents, how to navigate is complicated, but then putting things together and getting in all sorts of other interesting discussions, like whether we should put them together, and for everyone or for a select group? It becomes the new way to think about prostate cancer. With our other colleagues with lung cancer and more molecularly based tumors that are treated, their conversations and conferences are a little different than what we’ve been doing.
I think we’re getting there, but our conversations are quite varied because it’s not knowing what it is, it’s using the data for when, so in some sense, it’s a bit more complicated because we have a lot of options, and it comes down to how many of our patients will get it all. There are data to show that second and third line, and there are a lot of folks out there still not getting treated, which is astonishing when you have all these different agents, but it makes our approach in the beginning critical. Starting from when you’re about to propose, and what are you going to do in the primary setting with locally advanced or local cancer. Everyone is having this conversation early so that we know the strategy, but it’s exciting times for sure.
Alan Bryce, MD: Great points, absolutely.
Transcript edited for clarity.
