New drugs combination could save 20,000 men Breakthrough study into prostate cancer treatment

AROUND 20,000 men a year with prostate cancer could benefit from a combination of drugs that boost survival dramatically, a Birmingham scientist who led the study has said.

A clinical trial run by Cancer Research UK – believed to be the biggest cancer treatment trial in the world – has found that giving two therapies at once cuts disease progression and offers some patients the chance of a cure.

Researchers said the new drug regime could “transform the treatment” of 20,000 men newly diagnosed with the disease each year in England.

Of these, 5,000 men with the most advanced disease which has spread around the body could see their life expectancy jump from 3.5 years years on average.

Of the 15,000 diagnosed when the disease is confined to the pelvic area, most could expect to live as long as they would if they were cancer-free.

Professor Nicholas James, chief investigator of the trial, from the University of Birmingham, said some patients may effectively be cured while others could expect to live as long as they normally would.

He added: “These are the most powerful results I’ve seen from a prostate cancer trial – it’s a once-in-a-career feeling. This is one of the biggest reductions in death I’ve seen in any clinical trial for adult cancers.

“Abiraterone is already used to treat some men whose disease has spread but our results show many more could benefit.

“In addition to the improvements in survival and time without relapse, the drug reduced to seven the rates of severe bone complications, a major problem in prostate cancer, by more than a half. I really hope these results can change clinical practice.”

The study included around 1,900 men with locallyadvanced cancer or whose disease had already spread.

Half were given the standard hormone therapy treatment known as androgen-deprivation therapy (ADT) while the other half received ADT plus the drug abiraterone.

Usually, abiraterone is given to men who have stopped responding to ADT but the study found that giving it much earlier – and in combination with ADT – had much stronger benefits.

Adding abiraterone to ADT reduced the risk of dying over three years by 37 per cent compared with men just on ADT.

It also lowered the chance of the cancer getting worse by 71 per cent compared with men just on ADT. After three years, 83 per cent of men in the abiraterone group were still alive compared with 76 per cent on standard ADT.

Abiraterone could now become a first-line treatment alongside ADT for men with advanced prostate cancer.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which approves drugs for the NHS, is already looking at the findings.

The men in the trial, known as Stampede, were aged 67 on average at the start of the study.

Some 52 per cent had disease that had spread around the body while 48 per cent had cancer confined to the prostate or pelvis.

After three years, fewer than five per cent of those on abiraterone whose disease was confined had relapsed and got worse compared to 25 per cent in the ADT arm of the trial.