New blood test may someday help guide the best treatment for aggressive prostate cancer

Tumors that spread, or metastasize, in the body shed cells into blood that doctors can scrutinize for insights into what a patient’s cancer might do. Analyzing these so-called circulating tumor cells (CTCs) isn’t part of routine care yet, in part because they’re so hard to pick out of the millions of normal cells in a blood sample. Still, scientists are making progress in this area. And in June, a research team reported that treatment decisions made on the basis of CTC testing had increased lifespans in men with an aggressive type of metastatic prostate cancer. Doctors usually treat metastatic prostate cancer with drugs that interfere with how a man’s body makes or uses testosterone, which is the male hormone (or androgen) that accelerates the tumor’s spread. If the standard hormone-blocking treatments aren’t effective, then doctors have two other options: they can either give chemotherapy drugs known as taxanes, or shift to other hormone blockers that act specifically on the cancer cell’s androgen receptor. Known as androgen receptor signaling (ARS) inhibitors, these alternative hormone blockers include an agent called enzalutamide and another called abiraterone. But neither of them will work if the androgen receptor has a genetic mutation called AR-V7 that also makes the tumors grow very aggressively. With mounting evidence showing that the mutation doesn’t affect a man’s response to taxanes, researchers began to wonder if screening for AR-V7 in CTCs coul...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Cancer Health Men's Health Prostate Health Source Type: blogs