‘Promising results’ in hormonal prostate cancer research

A newly-published report has shown “promising results” in new hormonal treatments for castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Scientists writing in the Lancet said the new hormonal treatment MDV3100 has shown “encouraging” anti-tumour activity against the disease in an initial trial.

Professor Howard Scher of Memorial Sloan-Kettering cancer centre, New York and colleagues found that the hormonal treatment prevents dormant prostate cancer cells from re-growing, as well as inducing tumour-cell death.

The authors said: “We recorded encouraging antitumour activity with MDV3100 in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancer [both before and after chemotherapy].”

They studied 140 patients with progressive, metastatic, castration-resistant prostate cancer, concluding that at all different doses of the hormone administered to the patients, there were “antitumour effects”.

According to Cancer Research UK, prostate cancer is now the most common cancer in men in Great Britain, with the exception of non-melanoma skin cancer. More than 35,500 men are diagnosed with the condition each year.