A new PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy combined with stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) proved effective at delaying the worsening of prostate cancer.
Findings suggested that “men who received the radioligand drug went a median of 17.6 months without disease progression, compared with 7.4 months for those who received SBRT alone. This translated into a significant delay in the start of hormone therapy, which is often used to treat recurrent disease.” This gives patients more time before receiving hormonal therapy, “which can carry significant side effects such as fatigue and bone loss.”
Prostate cancer can return years after initial treatment in “only a handful of new lesions, a stage known as oligorecurrent disease.” SBRT is a common approach for treatment in these cases, but most men who receive it “eventually relapse, often because of microscopic disease too small to detect on imaging scans. Radioligand therapy, which precisely delivers radiation to cancer cells while minimizing harm to healthy tissues, may help address this hidden disease.”
The group of patients who received a combination of the two treatments had more than double lengths of progression-free survival on average, “extending it from 7.4 months to 17.6 months, reducing the risk of cancer returning, the need for hormone therapy, or death by 63%.” However, “64% of men [in the combination group] still experienced disease progression, underscoring that microscopic cancer remains a major challenge.”
