Prostate Cancer

Within the last few years, nuclear medicine has added to cutting edge treatment options for cancer. One of the latest advancements is the use of a treatment called Pluvicto to treat metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

For men with a type of low-risk early prostate cancer, surveillance can be an option over immediate treatment. To help providers and patients make more informed decisions about safely choosing surveillance, Rogel Cancer Center researcher Simpa Salami, M.D., M.P.H., received a $1.14 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to answer lingering questions about the biology of these early prostate cancers.

A free online tool could potentially save some prostate cancer patients more than $9,000 in out-of-pocket drug costs, a study finds. For patients enrolled in Medicare Part D prescription drug plans, out of pocket costs can vary significantly.

Using tissue samples and cell models from patients, Joshi Alumkal, M.D., Wicha Family Professor of Oncology and leader of the genitourinary medical oncology section at Rogel, and his team zeroed in on the lysine specific demethylase 1, a protein involved in turning genes off and on in normal and cancer cells that appears particularly important in certain aggressive forms of prostate cancer.

Principal investigator Arul Chinnaiyan, M.D., Ph.D., will lead a $4 million project that will employ a suite of cutting-edge drug development techniques to develop an effective inhibitor of MYC, a major driver of about 70% of all cancers, including prostate cancer.

In the face of conflicting evidence over the risks and benefits of routine prostate cancer screenings, a large, longitudinal analysis found Veterans Health Administration (VA) medical centers with lower prostate screening rates had higher rates of metastatic prostate cancer cases in subsequent years than centers with higher screening rates.

Drugs like enzalutamide that inhibit male hormones from activating the androgen receptor have been used to treat advanced prostate cancer for more than a decade. While successful in most cases, these drugs can eventually stop working, but there is a limited understanding about how this change occurs.