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Survival For Prostate Cancer Patients Younger Than 50 Improved By Surgery
Posted by: admin in Pharmacy Drugs on November 23rd, 2009
For men younger than 50 with prostate cancer, undergoing a radical prostatectomy can greatly increase their chances for long-term survival, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital.
Results from the study done on the National SEER database show that the surgical procedure improves the 5-, 10-, 15- and 20-year survival for younger patients, when compared with other standard treatments such as radiotherapy or watchful waiting.
“When given the choice between surgery, watchful waiting or external beam radiotherapy, patients younger than 50 with moderately and poorly differentiated prostate cancers have better long-term overall and cancer-specific survival when they opt for surgery,” says study author Naveen Pokala, M.D., an urologist with Henry Ford Hospital.
Based on findings from the study, Dr. Pokala and co-author Mani Menon, M.D., director of Henry Ford’s Vattikuti Urology Institute, strongly recommend retropubic radical prostatectomy - a surgical procedure that removes the entire prostate gland plus some of the tissue around it - as the treatment of choice for prostate cancer patients under the age of 50.
Prostate cancer affects one in six men in the United States during his lifetime, but according to the American Cancer Society only one in 35 will die of it.
Although the majority of all prostate cancer are diagnosed in men older than 65, its prevalence is growing among men younger than 50. In fact, about one in 10,000 men under the age of 40 will be diagnosed this year with prostate cancer.
To determine which treatment option offers the best chance for long-term survival for younger prostate cancer patients, Pokala and Menon studied more than 8,200 men under age 50 with prostate cancer.
Among the study group, 73 percent were white and about 22 percent were black. The mean age was 46, and over 70 percent had moderately and 22 percent had poorly differentiated cancers. Of the patients, 1,065 were managed with no definitive treatment (watchful waiting); 6,614 (79.9 percent) with radical retropubic prostatectomy; and 600 with external beam radiotherapy.
The cancer-specific survival in the NDT group was 78 percent at 16 years, in the radiation group was 63 percent at 17 years; and 94 percent in the radical prostatectomy at 21 years. On a subset analysis the outcome was significantly better after radical prostatectomy in patients with moderately and poorly differentiated prostate cancer.
Overall, the study shows the 5-year, 10-year, 15-year and 20-year overall survival and cancer specific survival is significantly increased in patients who were less than 50 years of age with moderately and poorly differentiated cancers in the surgery group.
The results were presented in Chicago at the recent American Urological Association’s annual meeting.
Source:
Dwight Angell
Henry Ford Health System
FDA Accepts Arno Therapeutics’ IND For AR-12 A PDK1 Inhibitor That Blocks The PI3K/Akt Pathway
Posted by: admin in Pharmacy Drugs on November 23rd, 2009
Arno Therapeutics, Inc., a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on oncology therapeutics, announced that the U.S.
Clinical Trials For Shingles Drug Take An Important Step Forward
Posted by: admin in Pharmacy Drugs on November 23rd, 2009
A possible new anti-viral drug designated FV-100, which could alleviate the suffering of millions of people with herpes zoster or shingles, has entered the second stage of clinical testing in patients.
Developed and patented by scientists based at Cardiff University, a Phase II clinical trial with FV-100 has recently been initiated in America. Previous research has shown the drug to be up to 10,000 times more potent than existing treatments in early lab tests.
The drug was discovered by a team in the Welsh School of Pharmacy and a virology group at the Rega Institute in Belgium, and is being further developed in collaboration with the U.S - based biopharmaceutical company, Inhibitex Inc. If it successfully demonstrates both safety and biological activity in this and subsequent trials, the treatment has the potential to improve the lives of over 2.5 million herpes zoster patients worldwide.
Shingles is caused by the same viral infection that causes chicken pox. It is estimated that around one in five people in the U.S., Europe and Japan will be affected by the debilitating condition during their lifetime. It is generally characterised by skin lesions, blisters and rash, and acute pain, and in many cases, post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN), which is a painful and often highly distressing condition resulting from nerve damage caused by the virus. Inhibitex believes FV-100 has the potential to reduce all of these symptoms.
Cardiff University’s Professor of Medical Chemistry Chris McGuigan, who led the team which discovered the anti-viral drug said:
“We believe this drug has the potential to be the most powerful inhibitor ever discovered to treat shingles.
“Each year only 25 new medicines are approved for clinical use [worldwide or by the FDA]. Although FV-100 is early in its overall development plan, the chances of it becoming an approved medicine improves the further we successfully progress through each of the clinical stages. We are incredibly excited at the prospect of FV-100 becoming commercially available in the future, and potentially being the first drug discovered in Cardiff University to make it to the marketplace.”
In Phase I trials of FV-100, Inhibitex reported no serious adverse events in healthy volunteers and data supported the potential for once-a-day dosing in future trials. Inhibitex anticipates completing its first Phase II trial of FV-100 in the first half of 2010.
Russell H. Plumb, president and chief executive officer of Inhibitex, Inc said: “We have more than 20 U.S sites qualified to enroll patients, and plan to ultimately utilise a total of 50-60 sites in this trial. We believe this enthusiastic response from the clinical community reflects its recognition of the significant unmet medical needs of the increasing number of shingles patients.”
Source:
Professor Chris McGuigan
Cardiff University