Does Prostate Cancer Have Any New Treatment Options?

While treatment for prostate cancer varies, and men have a wide menu of choices, there are a few new treatment options in the works that may soon be available. A new vaccine, improved cryosurgery, and a new gene-based therapy are currently in development. The vaccine dubbed Provenge is currently on the FDA's fast track program, cryosurgery has been around for awhile but has seen some recent advances in technique that make it more viable, and the new gene therapy known as Ad5-TRAIL involves injecting a virus carrying a prostate cancer fighting gene into the prostate gland itself. This article will examine the current status and details of these new prostate cancer treatments.

Dendreon Corporation's prostate cancer vaccine known as Provenge is the most promising new treatment of the three. Intended for cancer that has spread outside the prostate gland and is so far without symptoms, the vaccine "teaches" the patient's immune cells to attack the cancer. Having just finished its second Phase 3 trial, the drug has shown a 30% increase in survival rates among advanced prostate cancer patients. Since it fills in a much-needed gap in the prostate cancer treatment field, it has been granted "fast track" status with the United States' Federal Drug Administration, which will hopefully speed along the approval process. While Provenge may be useful for advanced prostate cancer, there is a new surgery for cancer patients in whom the disease is confined to the prostate gland.

Also known as the "male lumpectomy," cryosurgery has been around for some decades. However, some recent advances in it have increased its potential effectiveness. The latest incarnation, focal cryosurgery, uses argon gas injected directly into the prostate gland to freeze and kill cancer cells. A study was done involving twenty men who had prostate cancer; all were given focal cryosurgery, and of the twenty, nineteen showed no signs of cancer as much as eight years later.

The advantage of cryosurgery is that the procedure can be successfully performed without resulting in the major side effects of traditional prostate removal surgery, such as impotence and incontinence. Although not widely performed, focal cryosurgery is a promising new treatment that solves one of the major problems in men facing prostate cancer.

The third new treatment option is a gene-based therapy called Ad5-TRAIL. The TRAIL gene is able to produce what's known as apoptosis in cells, which is a "planned" cell death, as opposed to necrosis, which is death due to injury. The TRAIL gene is inserted into the prostate gland via a virus that has been engineered to not reproduce, and passes the program for apoptosis on to the tumor cells, which then die.

The advantage to this therapy is that the programmed cell death only affects cancerous cells and leaves normal cells alone. The treatment is still in its infancy and is currently only in Phase I of its clinical trial.

The future looks hopeful for prostate cancer. New treatment options are in their infancy, but a few are on the verge of becoming reality. Provenge is on track to FDA approval, and focal cryosurgery is available today. While Ad5-TRAIL gene therapy is years away from becoming a viable treatment, it perhaps looks the most promising as a targeted, gene-based therapy that directly attacks only cancer cells.

James Culp is a prostate cancer survivor and runs a free newsletter tracking the latest developments in treatments for prostate cancer. His newsletter can be subscribed to at http://www.prostaide.org

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