Addressing Unmet Needs in Metastatic Hormone-Sensitive Prostate Cancer

Neeraj Agarwal, MD, director of genitourinary oncology program and professor of medicine at the Huntsman Cancer Institute, University of Utah, discusses some of the unmet needs that exist in the prostate cancer space.

Despite significant advancements in the treatment of metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer over the past decade, the majority of patients still face disease progression. Current therapies, including androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and androgen receptor pathway inhibitors like apalutamide [Erleada], have extended survival but do not prevent eventual disease progression. Addressing this unmet need requires the development and implementation of novel therapies.

While recent and upcoming treatments show promise, integrating these new regimens effectively into clinical practice remains a challenge. The goal is to transform metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer into a manageable chronic condition rather than a lethal one, while maintaining or improving patients' quality-of-life. According to Agarwal, future efforts will need to focus on optimizing the use of these novel therapies to enhance survival rates and manage the disease more effectively.

Transcription:

0:09 | The survival of patients with metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer has improved dramatically over the past decade. Unfortunately, the majority of these patients will eventually experience disease progression, and metastatic prostate cancer remains a lethal disease for most of our patients.

0:40 | The disease state itself remains a huge unmet need. We will continue to need more novel therapies down the line after patients experience disease progression on ADT plus androgen receptor pathway inhibitors such as apalutamide for hormone-sensitive metastatic prostate cancer, but how to utilize novel regiments which are being developed. Many of them have been recently approved or will be approved in the near future. How to improve survival, how to make sure that we turn metastatic hormone sensitive prostate cancer into a chronic disease, which is no longer lethal, and achieving that without compromising quality-of-life are those challenges I see in the coming years for us, and that is an unmet need.