Prostate cancer ‘progress’ hailed
New treatments have tripled the life expectancy of British men with incurable prostate cancer over the last 10 years, research has shown.
Patients treated at a leading London cancer hospital which pioneers new therapies now survive 41 months on average, compared with between 13 and 16 months a decade ago.
Scientists studied data on 442 men who had participated in trials and drug access programmes at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust since 2003.
All had prostate cancer which had spread and no longer responded to standard hormone treatments.
Some 78% of the patients received docetaxel-based chemotherapy, which was approved for NHS use in 2005.
In addition, half were treated with abiraterone, a new prostate cancer drug that only became available on the NHS last year.
A small number of patients were offered three other novel therapies, enzalutamide, cabazitaxel and radium.
Professor Johann de Bono, from the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden, said: “This analysis highlights the remarkable benefits we are seeing from new treatments for men with advanced prostate cancer. Put simply, men are living for much longer with incurable disease than they did a few short years ago.
“Advanced prostate cancer is still incurable, but new treatments are giving men more time to do the things that matter to them with their loved ones. That couldn’t be more important and shows the strides we are making in the fight against the disease.”
Prediction models used to forecast the likely survival time of men with advanced prostate cancer needed to be updated to take into account the impact of new treatments, said the researchers writing in the journal European Urology.
For example, 238 patients who had not received chemotherapy before entering a clinical trial survived an average of two-and-a-half years.
Two widely used prediction models indicated that these men would live between 18 and 21 months, falling short by about a year.
Professor Alan Ashworth, chief executive of the The Institute of Cancer Research, said: “We are living through a remarkable period of progress against prostate cancer, with new drugs such as abiraterone transforming the prospects for men with advanced disease.
“It’s excellent news that men receiving these therapies at The Royal Marsden are living for so much longer than they would have been expected to do a decade ago. The study highlights too the benefits of being able to treat so many patients on clinical trials, expanding access to new drugs and accelerating their path to wider use on the NHS.”
The hospital trust’s chief executive Cally Palmer said: “Over the last decade, there have been some exciting steps forward in the treatment of advanced prostate cancer, and we have pioneered use of many of the newest drugs here at The Royal Marsden.
“New treatment options developed through clinical trials are delivering real benefits for the quality of life of men with prostate cancer, with fewer of the side-effects associated with conventional chemotherapy.”
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