Tag Archive for: prostate cancer clinical trials

When Should Prostate Cancer Patients Consider a Clinical Trial?

/in , , , , , , , /by

When Should Prostate Cancer Patients Consider a Clinical Trial? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

When should patients consider a clinical trial? Dr. Atish Choudhury explains the benefits of trial participation, how to get involved, and discusses emerging approaches in cancer treatment.

Dr. Atish Choudhury is the Co-Director of the Prostate Cancer Center at Dana-Farber/Brigham & Women’s Cancer Center.
Learn more about Dr. Choudhury here.

See More from Engage Prostate Cancer

Related Resources

Why Should Prostate Cancer Patients Partner in Care Decisions?

Why Should Prostate Cancer Patients Partner in Care Decisions?

 Which Factors Impact Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatment Decisions?

Which Factors Impact Advanced Prostate Cancer Treatment Decisions?

 An Expert Debunks Advanced Prostate Cancer Myths

An Expert Debunks Advanced Prostate Cancer Myths

Transcript:

Katherine:                  

Where do clinical trials fit in?

Dr. Choudhury:       

So, clinical trials can fit in anywhere along the treatment trajectory for prostate cancer. It’s not something that’s reserved for kind of late-stage disease. So, for example, for people with localized disease, there are different types of treatment strategies that might be available to maybe enhance the activity of the surgery or the radiation that’s planned. And so, we might consider a clinical trial even for localized prostate cancer.

And then, anywhere along the way, there are standard treatments that are available, and then, there are some experimental approaches that might be available. And the experimental approaches might be to add an additional drug to the standard or to actually – what we call “deescalate treatment” – give a little bit less of the medication and see if the outcomes are the same. And these are tests.

And so, the control arm, when there’s a randomized trial, is generally considered a standard of care. And then, the experimental arm is some alteration or deviation from that standard. But many of our trials are also single-arm trials where we’re testing some experimental regimen that all patients who participate in the trial will take part in, and it’s really important for the patient to ask, “What are the clinical trials available?” “What are the alternatives as far as standard treatments?” and “Are there other clinical trials other than the one that’s being discussed,” that might be appropriate for them?

Katherine:                  

Are there emerging approaches that patients should know about?   

Dr. Choudhury:        

Yeah. So, a lot of the emerging approaches are related to the genetics of the prostate cancer, as I just mentioned. And then, these different forms of radiation drugs – in addition to the ones that have already demonstrated survival advantage, there are other ones in the pipeline. And then, one thing that patients are very curious about is immune therapy approaches to prostate cancer.

Now, the standard kind of immune therapy drugs that are approved for lung cancer, and melanoma, and kidney cancers don’t tend to work particular well for prostate cancer. But there are many clinical trials trying to combine those kinds of drugs with other drugs or have newer approaches to immune therapies that patients with advanced cancer can certainly ask about.

Again, all of this is really experimental, and people need to understand that these sorts of approaches aren’t going to help everyone. But participating in a clinical trial allows our patients to contribute to knowledge that can be useful for other patients down the line.

How Does Aggressive Prostate Cancer Impact Various Populations?

/in , , , , , , , , /by

How Does Aggressive Prostate Cancer Impact Various Populations? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How is prostate cancer impact different for some populations? Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyame shares how prostate cancer incidence and death rates vary for some groups, potential risk factors, screening recommendations, and actions that can be taken to improve health outcomes.

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live

Related Resources:

Ask the Prostate Cancer Expert: How Is Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Evolving?

Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

What differences do you see in terms of aggressiveness for cancers in different…various populations? 

Dr. Nyame: 

This is an area of research that for me, is trying to understand why certain populations have more aggressive or worse outcomes when it comes to prostate cancer. 

The most obvious example of this here in the United States is for Black men. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, so about 70 percent more likely to be diagnosed, and they are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as men of other races in the United States. If you look at what the natural history of prostate cancer and Black men looks like, meaning if you were to chart from diagnosis through the course of the disease, does it look different for Black men? The answer is yes, it appears of Black men get prostate cancer when they’re younger, and there’s data to suggest that perhaps Black men get more aggressive prostate cancer because they’re more likely to progress from the localized or treatable disease to stage IV aggressive disease that can’t be treated. We don’t understand what the drivers of that are for a long time, the medical community has suggested that it’s all biology, and by that may be an inherited biology, but we know that health disparities really carry a significant social contribution. And, in fact, I like to say that social and environmental factors inform biology too. And so, if we see something biologic that explains these trends, it doesn’t mean that that’s the way they were born, it might mean that you put someone in a community that lives near a highway with high pollution or does not have access to clean water or lives in a state of high stress or over security. We don’t know what the biologic manifestations of those types of experiences are, but that perhaps is the reason why we see our communities of color, especially our Black men, are experiencing a higher burden of prostate cancer. 

Sherea Cary: 

So, is there a push to have African American men tested earlier with the PSA test, since it appears that they may get prostate cancer earlier?  

Dr. Nyame: 

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, which makes a recommendation to the medical community about prostate cancer screening states that they cannot make a specific recommendation about screening in Black men and other high-risk populations like men with a strong family history of prostate cancer, because those men were not included in the clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of PSA testing for screening. 

Unfortunately, Black men make up 3 percent or less of participants in the two screening trials that have informed whether there’s a benefit to PSA testing, which there has been shown to be a 20 percent decrease in dying from prostate cancer if you get screened. We recently took data from the screening trials and superimposed them on real-world data from our surveillance apparatus for cancer in the United States, and what we found was that if you did lower the age of screening in Black men from age 55 to 45, that you did decrease the risk of dying from prostate cancer significantly. It is our hope that this type of research will encourage the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force and other medical societies to reconsider their screening recommendation for Black men, ultimately, whatever, if there is a recommendation made to screen at younger ages, I think we need to be conscientious and evaluate what the impact is on the ground, so that if there is a time where we need to reverse a recommendation like that because it’s potentially harmful, that we consider that. But I feel strongly sitting here today that we do need to advocate for earlier screening and Black men. 

Ask the Prostate Cancer Expert: How Is Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Evolving?

/in , , , , , , , /by

Ask the Prostate Cancer Expert: How Is Prostate Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment Evolving? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

 What should prostate cancer patients, care partners, and underserved patients know about? Watch as expert Dr. Yaw Nyame from the University of Washington shares insight about prostate cancer detection, screening guidelines, specific concerns for Black men, support groups, and clinical trials to work toward better health outcomes for all. 

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live

Related Resources:

How Has the Onset of Prostate Cancer Evolved?

Transcript:

Sherea Cary: 

Hello, we are here with Dr. Nyame. I have a few questions for you. Dr. Nyame, how has prostate cancer evolved over the last decade regarding the onset of the disease, the population in which it impacts the care and the treatment? 

Dr. Nyame: 

You know, prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men that is in a solid organ. It affects about one in nine men over their lifetime, and probably the biggest advance or change we’ve seen in the disease occurred in the late ‘80s with the introduction of the PSA test. What that allows us to do is detect cancers very early in their natural life history, if you will, and that gives us the opportunity really to provide treatment when there’s…with an opportunity for cure. The downside to that is not all prostate cancers are the same, we know that some prostate cancers are diseases that men will die with and not from…meaning that some of these cancers that we detect don’t need any treatment or intervention. This means that a lot of research that has occurred in the last decade or two has been focused on helping us determine which cancers deserve treatment and which ones we can watch safely and so some of the biggest advances have been diagnostic tests such as radiology imaging, so we’ve seen things like MRI really come into the mainstay of prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment upfront. We have very exciting nuclear medicine scans. 

So, you might hear the term PSM-A as a new test that’s really going to disrupt and change the way the prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment is made. We also have genetic testing that we can do on blood samples, urine samples, and tissue, that might give us some very exciting information about one’s risk of dying from prostate cancer, which ultimately is what we want to know when we’re offering treatment to someone.  

Sherea Cary: 

Thank you. What screening test or risk-reducing care would you suggest for men who have a family history of prostate cancer, and at what age should screening begin for specific populations?  

Dr. Nyame: 

Unfortunately, there is no data, rigorous data to help answer this question, but we know that men that have a high risk of developing prostate cancer benefit from earlier testing with PSA. We know this from a variety of studies, including some modeling studies, which we have done here at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center at the University of Washington. When I talk about high-risk groups, it really falls into two categories, men who have a strong family history and a strong family history means a first-degree relative, father, brother, grandfather that has prostate cancer. 

But when we look at the genetics of prostate cancer it’s not just about prostate cancer itself, what we have found is that things that lead to family histories of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, colon cancer also increase your risk of prostate cancer, for instance, the BRCA gene, which is a breast cancer gene is associated with a marked increased risk of prostate cancer. So, knowing your family history matters and knowing it beyond prostate cancer is important. The other high-risk group as men of African descent or ancestry, we know our black men have a much higher risk of developing prostate cancer in their lifetime, it’s about a one in six or one in seven risk compared to one in nine in the general population. So, the recommendation I make for these two groups is to consider screening earlier and to do it more frequently. On average, PSA screening happens for men between the ages of 55 and 70 or 74, and it’s usually every two years, if you look at the population level data, I would suggest that you consider screening at age 45 or 40 and doing it every year, however, you’ve got to turn the screening off at some point. So, if your PSA stays low and is non-concerning into your early 70s, then I think you can be reassured that your risk of having a fatal or aggressive cancer is low, and you could safely stop screening. 

 Sherea Cary:

Thank you. So, for someone who has a first degree relative such as a father who had prostate cancer and maybe even an aggressive form of prostate cancer, it will be important for them to get screened at 40 to start at least having a baseline number to be able to watch it? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely. The baseline number is really a topic of discussion in the urologic community because we know that if you get a PSA at age 40 and its above one or above the median for your age group, that you’re a lifetime risk of having what we call significant cancer, so that’s a cancer that might have the potential to be fatal in your lifetime is higher, and so theoretically, you could get that one-time PSA at 40 and use that as a basis for how intense your screening practice would be. I’ve talked about PSA testing, but screening also involves the digital rectal exam, and it’s important that men understand that both those things together is what leads to a thorough and good clinical evaluation, when it comes to prostate cancer risk. 

Sherea Cary:

Thank you so much for sharing the information about the BRCA gene as well. I’ve heard information about the BRCA gene, but I always hear it in relation to women, I’ve never heard it in relation to a connection with prostate cancer. 

That is very interesting to know. What does a multi-discipline approach to prostate cancer look like? 

Dr. Nyame:

Well, when you think about prostate cancer and how it’s diagnosed and how it’s treated, you’re talking about a process that involves a team, the process often starts with your primary care physician, he or she may order a PSA test, which will prompt a biopsy if it’s positive, so that’s the step one is that relationship you have with your primary care physician. Step two is going to be your urologist, that’s the person that’s going to do your biopsy, and if you are diagnosed with prostate cancer that person in conjunction with your primary care physician is then going to be leading this process of, do we actively watch your cancer because it’s a low risk, or do we seek treatment because it’s localized, meaning it’s in the prostate and we can still get your treatment with curative intent as we call it, or has it spread? And in that case, your options for a doctor is different on the watch side, you’re probably looking at a urologist who’s watching closely, on the localized side, you’re going to talk to maybe a radiation specialist or a urologist because both treatments are equal and their effectiveness from cancer treatment. 

But they have different side effects. And I think to get good information about what treatment is best for you, you should see both, and then on the advanced side, you’re talking about medical oncologist that’s going to help navigate all of the various treatments that we have now for stage IV prostate cancer, and even in that setting, you might still find yourself considering a clinical trial with someone like a urologist or getting radiation treatment, which can be standard of care in select patients that have stage IV cancer. So as you can see, it is a very wide range of individuals that are helping take care of your cancer, and that’s just on the treatment side, that’s not talking about any of the other supportive services that you may need that may exist either in your community or in your health systems where you’re getting treated, and those can include patient navigators, social workers, the various nursing services, nutritionists, there’s a lot of people that you may want to put on your team as you’re considering your care. 

Sherea Cary: 

Thank you. So, some people may consider prostate cancer a couples’ disease. What advice would you give to a care partner? My father was a prostate cancer survivor, my mother was very supportive of him, but I took much of the lead as far as being his caregiver and coordinating things between my father, his doctor’s appointments, and with my siblings. 

Do you believe that support people, caregivers, such as children, are able to also assist in receiving care? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely. The data is overwhelming in this scenario, patients who are partnered or have strong social support do better, and I always say that the patients who have the best outcomes when it comes to cancer, have someone like you, Sherea in their life. It’s not surprising, given the burden of cancer treatment, that having someone that can help navigate all the aspects of your care and be there to support you leads to better outcomes and better satisfaction with the treatments that you choose, a cancer diagnosis, especially prostate cancer diagnosis, a disease that has a very high cure rate, has a very long lifespan, but has really life-altering potential consequences of the treatments you received, has an impact on what we return your survivorship. So how do you live with your cancer, and so the individuals that are there to support you through that journey are absolutely critical. 

Sherea Cary: 

Thank you. What differences do you see in terms of aggressiveness for cancers in different… Various populations?  

Dr. Nyame: 

This is an area of research that for me, is trying to understand why certain populations have more aggressive or worse outcomes when it comes to prostate cancer. 

The most obvious example of this here in the United States is for black men. Black men are more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, so about 70% more likely to be diagnosed and they are twice as likely to die from prostate cancer as men of other races in the United States. If you look at what the natural history of prostate cancer and Black men looks like, meaning if you were to chart from diagnosis through the course of the disease, does it look different for black men? The answer is yes,, it appears of Black men get prostate cancer when they’re younger, and there’s data to suggest that perhaps Black men get more aggressive prostate cancer because they’re more likely to progress from the localized or treatable disease to stage IV aggressive disease that can’t be treated. We don’t understand what the drivers of that are for a long time, the medical community has suggested that it’s all biology, and by that may be an inherited biology, but we know that health disparities really carry a significant social contribution, and in fact, I like to say that social and environmental factors inform biology too, and so if we see something biologic that explains these trends, it doesn’t mean that that’s the way they were born, it might mean that you put someone in a community that lives near a highway with high pollution or does not have access to clean water or lives in a state of high stress or over security, we don’t know what the biologic manifestations of those types of experiences are, but that perhaps is the reason why we see our communities of color, especially our Black men, experiencing a higher burden of prostate cancer. 

Sherea Cary:

So, is there a push to have African-American men tested earlier with the PSA test, since it appears that they may get prostate cancer earlier?  

Dr. Nyame: 

The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force, which makes a recommendation to the medical community about prostate cancer screening states that they cannot make a specific recommendation about screening in black men and other high-risk populations like men with a strong family history of prostate cancer, because those men were not included in the clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of PSA testing for screening. 

Unfortunately, black men make up 3 percent or less of participants in the two screening trials that have informed whether there’s a benefit to PSA testing, which there has been shown to be a 20 percent decrease in dying from prostate cancer if you get screened. We recently took data from the screening trials and superimposed them on real-world data from our surveillance apparatus for cancer in the United States, and what we found was that if you did lower the age of screening in Black men from age 55 to 45, that you did decrease the risk of dying from prostate cancer significantly. It is our hope that this type of research will encourage the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force and other medical societies to reconsider their screening recommendation for black men, ultimately, whatever, if there is a recommendation made to screen at younger ages, I think we need to be conscientious and evaluate what the impact is on the ground, so that if there is a time where we need to reverse a recommendation like that because it’s potentially harmful, that we consider that, but I feel strongly sitting here today that we do need to advocate for earlier screening and Black men. 

Sherea Cary:

What advice do you have for prostate cancer patients about locating a clinical trial. Where can you find one? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Clinical trials tend to happen at the big cancer centers and the big academic university centers, although many of those programs will have affiliate partners out in the community. The easiest way to learn about clinical trials is to start by asking the physician that’s treating you for your prostate cancer, oftentimes, they’ll have resources and connections to the trials directly or are the people who are administering them; however, other great sources are going to be patient advocacy networks, and there are many of them for prostate cancer, there’s one… There are several, I’ll start naming a few. They have the Prostate Cancer Foundation, you have Us TOO, you have zero cancer, you have a PHEN, Prostate Health Education Network, which is an advocacy group for black men with prostate cancer. So these are all great sources of finding out what clinical trials exist, and in addition, you can just get on the Internet and Google if that’s something you have access to, the trick is navigating all the information, and I think knowing what trials are available for you, whether you qualify, that kind of thing can be difficult, and that’s ultimately where finding a provider, whether it’s your direct urologists or radiation oncologist or whoever is helping treat your prostate cancer, either them directly or sometimes seeking a second opinion, and going to a place where you might find someone who has some expertise in trials, if that’s something that you’re interested in.  

Sherea Cary: 

My father participated in a clinical trial, it was going on, I think the time of his treatment, and it was offered to us, and he was at a big facility here in Houston that offered…ask him if he wanted to participate. We did a lot of research. We said we’d try it. And we were glad to be able to participate. I participated in clinical trials also for different health conditions, ’cause I believe it’s important that we have to participate in order for our people to gather the information that’s necessary. So thank you for that. 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely, you know I think there are a lot of reasons that we think that our black community, for instance, may not participate in a clinical trial given the history of medical experimentation and various forms of abuse that have existed in our history, but what I recently heard from our partner of our community partners at PHEN, when they surveyed black men about prosecutor clinical trials, was that although there was some concern about trust in the history, that the overwhelming majority of the men wanted to participate, but they never were asked, and that’s really stuck with me, and I think that black men are under-represented in clinical trials, and we have to find ways to be more inclusive and understand what barriers might exist into participation so that we can have that data to care better for the population. 

Sherea Cary: 

Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I appreciate you sharing your knowledge. 

Advanced Prostate Cancer: David’s Clinical Trial Profile

/in , , , , , , /by

Advanced Prostate Cancer: David’s Clinical Trial Profile from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Prostate cancer patient David received a diagnosis at stage IV during a routine PSA check. Watch as he shares his prostate cancer journey, his experience with clinical trials and treatments, and his advice to other patients about lessons learned about prostate cancer side effects and the impacts of clinical trials.

See More From Patient-to-Patient Diverse Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial Profiles

Transcript:

David: 

Hello, my name’s David. I am 58 years-old.I was diagnosed in 2016 with prostate cancer, I had no actual signs or symptoms of prostate cancer, it was only found due to Army doctors, I had something wrong with me, which had nothing to do with the cancer. They did a PSA check, and my PSA came back at 1050, where it should be around 0. From that I then got sent to a local hospital where I had tests, I had biopsies to open my prostate, which found out I had stage IV prostate cancer. 

From there I got asked would I like to go to the Christie County Hospital in Manchester, UK. From there, they offered me the trial called the STAMPEDE trial. This trial was used in different procedures, which is already around, we use them together to try and extend people with prostate’s life. I got to turn the arm where it was also attached with chemotherapy, followed by 20 sessions of radiotherapy. This happened over three, four months, which after that brought my PSA down, but only to round 20 odd. From this after a couple of months, my PSA started to rise fairly quickly. I then got put onto the drug called bicalutamide (Casodex). This lasted a couple of months, because my cancer is so aggressive, it started to grow. I then got put onto another chemotherapy, cabazitaxel (Jevtana). After my first session of the cabazitaxel, I then got a CT scan and from this we found out the growths were still growing. 

So after this, I then got put on a drug called abiraterone with [inaudible] which is a stand-only. I was on this for 22 months, which was very good, it brought my PSA down to eight, which is as low as it’s ever been. Like I say, it lasted 22 months, but then the cancer started to come back quite a bit, so my oncologist actually said there’s no actual normal treatment left for me, and asked would I like to go on to trials, clinical, a first stage clinical trial, right away I said yes. My first clinical trial was a Carrick called Carrick, this lasted six months, but again, the cancer started to grow again, so I came off of this. I then have four weeks, no trials at all. It’s what called a clean-out where you can’t have any drugs at all in between trials. I then went on to what was called task 368-1, this lasted longer which lasted seven months. That again, the cancer starts to grow again. So, then I got on this one called CellCentric For the the CellCentric trail, they put you back on to abiraterone, which normally you don’t, wouldn’t take past one to two months… for me, it’s carried on working again. It’s now on seven months of working until it stops working, I can’t go on the new drug called CellCentric. 

For me, this is cool because it’s still working, the old drug, and it’s a very…let’s say there’s not a lot of side effects except for what steroids [inaudible]. So at the moment, we’re just seeing how it goes. I have scans every eight weeks, a CT scan and a full body scan from each time they come back, they then decide what’s happening next…and that is my journey up to now, which is five-and-a-half years later. 

With the clinical trials, I feel really good at the moment, because as I said, the trial [inaudible] and abiraterone (Zytiga) is not a drug that causes a lot of side effects. Through other trials have been, they are very intense, and that’s what they always warn people, which are overnight stays when you first take the drugs, so they are very tiring, you have to have blood done overnight all the way through the night, you get BCGs to make sure your body is not reacting to the drugs, and then the side effects of the drugs after.  So, they are very intense, but also, I am still here, I did not expect to be here. October, this year October I got told I would not be here three years ago, so it shows what clinical trials can actually do for you.  I’m still here, I still live a very good life. We go walking, the wife and I quite often, and we did three, four-mile last night, and we just enjoy our lives. 

People don’t realize…a lot of men don’t talk about it the physical side and the sexual side of prostate cancer, the treatment, because your libido to go, and it just causes a [inaudible] of your testosterone. You don’t feel like…and it’s a closeness that you lose… Amanda’s been unbelievable, she’s been there for me all the way through. She’s my rock, she’s the one went down down, she pushes me, but then she has days where she’s down. And this is where people need to realize the partners will improve the encounters much as the patient. And this is some of them we talked about…we’re very open about people where we talk about it. We have our days, the last couple of days I’ve been down. But she’s there to try and help me get back, and I try and do it for her when she is…and the family is the same, having the family support, when I’ve been to appointments, I get phone calls, quite a few, I get messages how are things going. And it’s just nice knowing that people do care, we have friends who keep in touch all the time, make sure everything’s okay, and you need that support of your family and friends. 

It’s very important for them to be there with you. 

The clinical trial to me is drugs that normally are not being used on humans before. They’ve only been tested in the laboratories. So, the first stage is a dosage stage where they check in and see what a person can actually take…so different people have different amounts of the dose.  And then from there they go to the expansion stage, and that is when they bring more people, and they know what dose to give people. Well, it’s to find new drugs, which can help other people in the future, as well as myself…I always say to myself, “This could help someone in the future, live for longer, stay longer with their family, be there longer.” It’s helping me other months, as I say, but it’s also to help other people in the future, something that’s not been used with people before.  

What I would say to other people who are thinking of going on clinical trials and the families is go for it. They are done so carefully, you’re checked all the time, your bloods are checked, your health is checked, your [inaudible]. It’s something that you can stay longer with your family. There could be cures in the future with this as well, no one actually knows, and it’s something people should not be scared of doing. Like I said, I’m on my third trial, and I will keep on going, I know there are more trials for me after this. And I will keep on going. 

Advanced Prostate Cancer: Gary’s Clinical Trial Profile

/in , , , , , , /by

Advanced Prostate Cancer: Gary’s Clinical Trial Profile from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Advanced prostate cancer patient Gary was an athlete in the first Oncology Olympic Games in Rome. Watch as Gary shares his prostate cancer journey, benefits and knowledge he’s gained from clinical trials, and his advice to others considering participating in a clinical trial. 

See More From Patient-to-Patient Diverse Prostate Cancer Clinical Trial Profiles

Transcript:

Gary: 

My name is Gary, I’m 66 years old and in January 2011, I was diagnosed with stage IV metastatic prostate cancer. 

I started my journey after the diagnosis, It was quite hard to take because I didn’t have symptoms, and it was a complete shock, and I found out by accident by being in hospital with pneumonia. When I found out, the team came around to talk to me, and they said there are lots of things open to me, like new medications, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and clinical trials. So it started off very positive, and that made me feel positive about it as well. I started off on hormone treatment and my PSA over a few months went down from 255 down to 12. In October of that year, I started on an infusion every four weeks to strengthen the bones and stop osteoporosis. So that was an important move. Then my PSA started rising again, it crept up to 83. So I was only on hormone treatment, and that was when they offered me the PREVAIL trial. I looked up on the Internet about the trial when it was a trial that was known as MD-310 at the first stage of firm tests in America, and then they were rolling out the stage two tests, so I discussed it with my family. 

And we decided it would be a good move. And so I signed up for the clinical trial, and I started the trial on the 23rd of December. Being a 50/50 placebo versus drug, I didn’t know whether I was going to be on the drug or not. Come the new year after of couple of months, I started feeling better and my PSA started going down again. I felt more energetic and my consultant agreed with me when I said I thought I was probably on the drug because there’s a difference. It actually was the one thing that I’ve done that changed my life because I had a future, I felt better which I was a bit worried about doing because of the prognosis when they said it was up to two years depending on if I go to a good treatment. And the longer I was on the drug, the better I felt. I had side effects. I was clinically castrated by the drug, because it cuts off all the testosterone apart from that. 

I had a very, very good life. My wife and I’ve been married since we’ve been 19. We got married in 1974, and we’re solid as a rock. She is my rock all the way through this. Sometimes it’s harder for her, I think, than for me, because she’s watching what I’m going through. But after I’ve been on it for so long, we got really confident, and life was completely normal. And then came my first grandchild in 2014, and closely followed by the second one, two years later, and then the third one last year in lockdown, and they have made it such of my life such a joy. So I’m so thankful for deciding to go on a clinical trial. I would recommend clinical trials because you’ve got the basic treatments, but clinical trials can make a big difference, because although they are not tested drugs they’re probably the drugs of the future. 

And you can get on the ladder early and be on these drugs, and instead of giving it…giving me about three years, it worked for nine years. So it gave me nine years of worry-free life. I’ve had my ups and downs, I had some phases of [inaudible] radiotherapy here and there, but it was…it really did make a massive difference to my life. And I don’t think if I hadn’t gone on that clinical trial, I don’t think I would have been here now.  I relish every single minute I’m here and if another clinical trial, that would suit me came up tomorrow, I would definitely think about going on that one as well.  

How Can Prostate Cancer Patients and Providers Help Ensure Quality Care?

/in , , , , , , , /by

How Can Prostate Cancer Patients and Providers Help Ensure Quality Care? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

How can prostate cancer patients and providers help ensure quality care? Host Dr. Nicole Rochester asks Dr. Petros Grivas to share insights about available patient resources and ways that providers can help extend improved prostate cancer diagnostics and treatments to patients for better care.

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live

Related Resources:

How Can I Get the Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where I Live?

Transcript:

Dr. Nicole Rochester: 

So, Dr. Grivas, how can we ensure that a patient’s geographic location doesn’t dictate the quality of care that they receive? 

Dr. Grivas: 

A very important question for sure, and I think as you point it out, we have touched upon this before, but I think it is definitely much more to be said and done. More importantly, I think the location has to do with multiple differences in social constructs, right? The location of the distance from a cancer center with expertise is one thing at the time to get to the cancer center is related to that, and also the social support that the patient may have, if for example, a particular treatment, for example, a clinical trial, the requires a weekly visit to the cancer center, is that the feasible thing for the patient who lives miles and miles away in the rural areas of Oklahoma or somewhere else. Can we design clinical trials that are more friendly to these scenarios that require less frequent visits. Can we provide, if possible, funding for housing closer to the cancer center, and there are examples of cancer centers doing that. They provide temporary housing for the patient to be able to be close to the cancer center, so they don’t even worry about going back and forth across the state lines sometimes. 

The other thing, of course, is insurance coverage, and again, this can have some relation to location, and it’s something we have to think about, how can we help our patients who have significant co-pays because of the recommended insurance to that location being supported by foundation or all other funds that the cancer center or the state, or again, other foundations, we have. The other issues about diagnostics and treatments, there has been some interesting discussion about particularly prostate cancer, about access to what we call next generation sequencing, which is a diagnostic test aiming to profile or fingerprint the cancer DNA to look for particular mutations that the cancer may have that may lead to a particular treatment options. 

 If, for example, mutation A is present, can we use a drug X that might be relevant in that context of a mutation and a recent data that was presented at ASCO 2021 showed that if you look at those mutations, they’re not very different between, for example, white and Black patients, there are similar types and frequencies of mutations. What is different is access to the test and, of course, access to the therapy of the test. So, I think we have to do a better job bringing ourselves to the community, extending our opportunities to the patient to get connected with the healthcare system, and they’ll build bridges to bring the patient and closer to the cancer center offering those tests. Work with patient navigation to help patients understand the significant value of the follow-up, but also provide them with a way that there’s equitable access to diagnostics and treatments. 

What Are Key Prostate Cancer Questions to Ask Care Team Members?

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

What Are Key Prostate Cancer Questions to Ask Care Team Members? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

What are key prostate cancer questions to ask care team members? Host Dr. Nicole Rochester and Dr. Yaw Nyame, and Dr. Petros Grivas provide information about vital questions to ask care providers about prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment options to work toward improved quality of life and equitable healthcare.

See More From Best Prostate Cancer Care No Matter Where You Live

Related Resources:

What Barriers Do Prostate Cancer Patients Face When Seeking Care?

How Can Prostate Cancer Patients and Providers Help Ensure Quality Care?

Transcript:

Dr. Nicole Rochester: 

I’d love for each of you to share maybe a couple of key questions that patients, our care partners facing prostate cancer should ask of their treatment team to ensure that they’re receiving appropriate care. 

So, we’ll start with you, Dr. Nyame. Any key questions that patients should be asking their care team when they seek treatment or diagnosis of prostate cancer? 

Dr. Nyame: 

Absolutely, I think that there’s a long list. Actually, I’ll tell you, my new prostate cancer diagnoses visits are usually my longest because there’s a lot to consider. I do think depending on what you’re having done and what you’re being considered for, so let’s say in the localized setting, prostate cancer is confined to the prostate, and you’re thinking about treatment like a surgery or radiation therapy, you really want to know what that center and what that provider’s experience is because we have a lot of supporting evidence that the more people doing this…no one’s going to be surprised by what I’m about to say, but the more that someone does is the better they’re going to be at it. Okay, and so making sure your team has a good experience with what you’re seeking to have done is important, and I think it’s well within your rights as a patient to understand that, so I think advocate for that. Secondly, I think basic questions, just to understand the relationship, I think…I like it when patients want to know a little bit about me because I’m going to be…they’re going to be in my hands. And so again, the importance of that relationship building and your visit is crucial. 

Lastly, I think when you come to the visit, have a list of questions based off of what you’ve researched and write them down, I find my most sophisticated patients or crossing off questions as I’m talking, because they came prepared and so that preparation…the act of doing a little bit of reading, there are a lot of resources, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, for instance, has a very nice patient guide that’s written by patients and language that’s really digestible and edited by experts, and so going through that and coming with your list of questions, I think is a really important thing for your visit, and those are just a few things I can think of that can lead to a meaningful clinic visit and exchange. 

Dr. Nicole Rochester: 

Excellent, I’m a huge fan of questions and being prepared for visits. What about you, Dr. Grivas, are there one or two key questions that you feel patients or their care partners should ask? 

Dr. Grivas: 

Great answers by Dr. Nyame, I totally agree. I think started with the basics, “What this diagnosis means for me, what is the current extent of the cancer,” we call the states, and “What is the outlook, what is the overall prognosis or at least estimate of the outcome?” That’s a reasonable question to ask and again some places more detail, some others may not, and it’s important for us also to ask the base and what they want to know, how much they want to know, I would take in things of them, they want to know the entirety of the information because it makes…help them make decisions. The other, I think it’s important point, “What are the treatment options and what is the intent of the treatment, what are we trying to achieve by giving treatment, Are we trying to cure, eradicate or eliminate the culture, are we to prolong life, are we trying to improve quality of life or are we just trying control the cancer? So, what are the goals of the treatment and what are the metrics of success, so what will be a successful outcome of that treatment? How do we measure that?” And I think it’s also important. 

Two more points, I would if I may. I think, again, going back to the importance of genetic counseling even more in prostate cancer, I think we recognize the importance in the aspect of patient treatment because some treatment options may depend on finding mutations. But also, the importance of the family, how much can prevent cancers in the brother family, close and extended family, if we find the mutation, can we set this mutation for other family members and do screening to prevent cancer prevention is ideal if we can do that and I think that’s a good discussion, so the patient can come to the visit if possible, by doing some homework about the family history. It’s hard for of us now, what’s happening in that chasm, right? But we do have the time to be informed of the importance of the question, this can help and expedite in our resources like to genetic counseling. And the last points, research, I want to again make the point, we should all do a better job to offer innovative clinical trials to patients across races, and it should be a very important point again equitable healthcare. And the patient should ask are clinical trials an option for me and do I have a clinical trial option? And I think it’s a great question, and hopefully this can help the patient get to integrative treatment, but also help the field. 

The research would get important answers, and the important answers can be for all the community and the specific populations, if we do trials, clinical trials with only the white patients, do we have the answer for the Black patients, or we have the answer for both and other races and ethnicities as well. 

Dr. Nyame: 

And I do want to take this opportunity to add one more thing because Dr. Grivas was talking about what does your treatment mean for you, and in this discussion about prostate cancer, we cannot talk about what questions do you bring without mentioning the impact, quality of life of our treatments? And I think that sometimes this is the elephant in the room that leads to the decision to not pursue treatment, and so I want to take this opportunity as the urologist to say this is the time to talk about what treatment is going to do for sexual function. This is the time to talk about what treatment means for your urinary symptoms and quality of life, a good and healthy discussion around these things need to happen during your visit, because I think sometimes what patients expect to have happen with treatment and reality don’t match. And you have an expert in front of you that can really give you some input as to what to expect, and in a similar vein, when you meet with survivors, these are some of the things that I know patients tell me they’re worried about, and these are people who are living it, that can give you really valuable information on that piece of quality of life, and I hope that those conversations can help us close that treatment disparity that we see between Black men and white men with prostate cancer. 

What Are Some Hereditary Factors Impacting Prostate Cancer Patients?

/in , , , , , , , /by

What Are Some Hereditary Factors Impacting Prostate Cancer Patients? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo.

Along with aging, hereditary factors also contribute to prostate cancer incidence. Expert Dr. Leanne Burnham details some of the hereditary factors, their mechanism of action, and some treatments under study in prostate cancer clinical trials for African American men.

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Top Tips and Advice for Prostate Cancer Patients and Caregivers Navigating Treatment

Should Prostate Cancer Screening Happen at an Earlier Age for Certain Patient Populations?

How Does Stress Correlate With Your Prostate Cancer Diagnosis?
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So, cancer is a disease of aging, and cancer is a hereditary disease for a lot of different kinds of cancers, not all, but for a lot of them. And so prostate cancer is one of those that we know for sure that there are some genetic variations that are passed down from our parents that would make men either predisposed or not to get prostate cancer and also would predispose them to get aggressive prostate cancer.

And so, for example, if you have a father, an uncle, grandfather, if you have family members that have had prostate cancer, and beyond that, if you had women in your family that have had breast cancer, then that increases your chance as a man to get prostate cancer and to get it even younger than other races would. And so certain things that we look at in the lab and in the clinic at City of Hope are really trying to understand what those hereditary factors are, and then how you can target them with drug treatments specifically.

So, for example, we have a clinical trial that a team of us developed, and we are looking at the ability of something called PARP inhibitor not to get too technical with you, but PARP inhibitors, if you want to Google it, they are at the forefront of prostate cancer treatments right now, and especially a few running in clinical trials. And so there is a hereditary disposition, there is a mutation on the BRCA gene that leads to PARP inhibitors benefiting any person that would have that BRCA mutation.

What we’re doing in our clinical trial is we are using a PARP inhibitor called talazoparib (Talzenna), and we are not only providing that to patients that have the spark commutation, but we are extending it to patients that may not have that mutation, and the reason for is because, and I definitely don’t want to get crazy technical, but the reason for it in a nutshell, as we know in cancer there is an interaction between PARP inhibition and androgen receptor function and reaction to treatments. And so, you may have heard of androgen and androgen receptor when it comes to prostate cancer, it’s really the fancy way of saying testosterone, and prostate cancer needs testosterone, or it needs androgen and androgen receptor to function and to grow. And so, what we want to see in this clinical trial is if we target, if we use PARP inhibitors in combination with hormone therapy that’s targeting androgen production androgen receptor, will we see better treatment and better response to the drugs in those patients. And the extra cool part to me is we know that there are variations in DNA segments that affect androgen receptor function in African American men. And so, for a specific mechanism that I won’t dive into, it involves trinucleotide repeats and link, segments links and all this, but because of these variations and androgen receptor in African American men that we know was associated with their ancestry and what they’ve inherited in their own DNA, this drug should work better in African American men. And we will be able to tease that out in this clinical trial. So, it’s an opportunity for African American men who have prostate cancer who have not developed castration resistance yet, but who do have metastatic prostate cancer so, at that point, there is not a cure, right, and so you can go to your physician, and you can get a standard of care therapy, or you may want to consider this clinical trial where you would receive standard care therapy. And then also, as I said before this VIP access to this new drug, this PARP inhibitor that we think may improve outcomes in men.

How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials?

/in , , , , , , , /by

How Will Telemedicine Impact Prostate Cancer Clinical Trials? from Patient Empowerment Network on Vimeo. 

How will prostate cancer clinical trials be changed by the addition of telemedicine to the treatment toolbox? Expert Dr. Leanne Burnham details patients who can benefit from telemedicine visits — and explains some of the history of discrimination in medical care for BIPOC patients and treatment response of African American men with prostate cancer

See More From the Prostate Cancer TelemEDucation Empowerment Resource Center

Related Resources:

 

Will Telemedicine Mitigate Financial Toxicity for Prostate Cancer Patients?

What Are the Limitations of Telemedicine for Prostate Cancer Patients?

Dr. Leanne Burnham’s Top Tips for Your Prostate Cancer Telemedicine Visit
 

Transcript:

Dr. Leanne Burnham

So clinical trials, the whole concept of clinical trials has really come to the forefront of the media right now with everything that’s happened in 2020 and currently with COVID.

And so a lot of people, if they were not aware of discrimination in medical care or clinical trials in the history of the U.S., then now they’re starting to become well-versed in it. So now people are hearing, “Oh, Tuskegee syphilis experiment,” where those of us who are in science, in medicine study health series research is, this is not new to us, so we’re grateful that it’s coming to the forefront. People are learning about it, but there is a justifiable medical mistrust by many Black and Brown people, but African Americans in particular, because of what has been done and not done in terms of medical treatment in the past 400 years. And so, because of this medical mistrust, that leads to sometimes a hesitancy to participate in clinical trials, because there’s an idea of, I don’t want to be a guinea pig, so that’s just one aspect that leads to less enrollment in clinical trials. There’s the whole other side of things, right? There’s the fact that a lot of African American patients are not asked to be in a clinical trial, they’re not explained what the clinical trial entails, a lot of people don’t realize that clinical trial patients have access to what I call what I consider to be VIP access to what is cutting-edge, and it doesn’t mean that it’s not new, that it hasn’t been tested extensively. It’s just now that it’s available to a patient at a particular disease stage that we might be looking at, and we have a lot of reason to believe that it will help that patient.

So a patient that’s enrolling in a clinical trial has access to the VIP treatment. And then as an added bonus, they actually have extra engagement with providers, extra touchpoints with their providers that patients that are receiving standard of care and not enrolled in a clinical trial don’t have as much access to. That being said, in addition to that, for us to really forward medicine in what we call precision medicine, which is able to have medication that’s tailored to an individual person based on their DNA makeup, based on how their body would individually respond to a drug. It’s super important, highly important that we have diversity in patients that are enrolled in clinical trials. For example, if you don’t have enough African American men enrolled in the clinical trial for prostate cancer, then you don’t really know if that medication would work worse or even better in that patient. And what we’re actually seeing is there has been a development of race-stratified clinical trials in the past less than 10 years, really around five years, where we’ve looked at chemotherapy, we looked at hormone therapy, and we looked at immunotherapy, where we include enough African American men in the trials, and we look at how the drug responds in African American men versus other men. And we see that African American men actually have a better treatment response than other races, so how amazing is that? Where you have a demographic that is more likely to get aggressive prostate cancer and die much younger, and we’re seeing that if they’re given the new treatments that are really tailored to target the disease in ways that we weren’t able to do it before, that they’re responding better and having longer survival and better outcomes. And so it’s really important for all those reasons I described to increase African American participation in clinical trials.

Now, I say all that to get to this point, which is, enrollment is not easy when you don’t live near a clinical trial center or a hospital that’s offering whatever treatment you’re interested in trying out as part of a trial. And so we know that race in this country is tied to geographic location, it’s tied to socio-economic status, and so what telemedicine provides is in previous instances where maybe a patient lives out the way 60 miles or more from an institution that has a clinical trial that they would want to be involved in, now they don’t have to drive to that center. They can have a telemedicine visit, they can conduct labs where they’re at near their home, see if they qualify to participate in the clinical trial based on their own body’s physiology and how their blood work comes out and how their imaging comes out, see if they qualify. And then they can enroll in that clinical trial, and so telemedicine in that aspect really opens the door to people who may have been interested who live out of the way, maybe even in a rural setting where the institutions that they have nearby, don’t have what they are interested in using or what may be best for their treatment plan personally, and so telemedicine opens a whole new world to patients such as those.