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New Hope for Prostate Cancer
Victims
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Prostate cancer afflicts hundreds of thousands of men around the world
every year. The best way to fight it is to find it at an early stage because it is at
this point when treatments are more successful.
However, if left unchecked and allowed to reach the advanced stage, the
cancer turns deadly, almost always never failing to claim the life of its victim.
But now there is hope, even for patients diagnosed with the most aggressive
and almost always fatal type of prostate cancer.
Scientists at the Institute of Cancer Research have discovered a drug that
could treat up to 80 percent of patients with aggressive and previously drug
resistant prostate cancer.
According to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, the drug
abiraterone caused a significant tumour shrinkage and a reduction in the
blood level of prostate specific antigen (PSA) - a protein associated with
prostate cancer activity - in the majority of patients.
Lead researcher Dr Johann de Bono said abiraterone worked by blocking the
generation of key hormones that drive the growth of prostate cancers.
Lead researcher Dr Johann de Bono said tumour shrinkage was observed in
70 to 80 percent of patients.
In the study, the drug was administered for up to two and a half years to
patients who were afflicted with very aggressive prostate cancer which was
exceptionally difficult to treat and almost always proved to be fatal.
One of the patients was Robin Wood, 65, from Wokingham near Reading. He
was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer in May 2007 and failed to
respond to treatment. This is his story:
"My prostate was very cancerous and I had only a one in five chance of being
alive by the end of 2008. However, abiraterone radically changed that, with my
health improving within a week of beginning the drug trial. I have just returned
from the huge Round The Island Yacht Race, which is a testament to my
better health. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer after reading about the
symptoms in the newspaper and immediately went to the GP. My life might
have turned out very differently if I hadn’t read that article."
Another patient involved in the abiraterone clinical trial was Simon Bush, 50,
from London. This is what he said:
"Last year I was in severe pain because of my prostate cancer, which had
worsened and spread to my bones. Chemotherapy and other treatments had
failed and news that I had very few treatment options available to me was
devastating for my family. Fitness and travelling were always my main
interests and abiraterone has allowed me to have a year so far of near
normality. The changes in my life have been dramatic, from managing
thousands of people in a major bank, to facing a very uncertain future, then to
renewed hope thanks to this drug trial."
The Institute of Cancer Research hopes the drug will be available for general
use in two to three years.
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