177Lu-PSMA-617. It is the name of a still experimental treatment evaluated in metastatic prostate cancer, the first results of which are promising.
A winning duo to better destroy tumor cells
Presented in plenary of the ASCO 2021 congress, it was used as part of of the VISION study carried out on 800 patients with relapsing prostate cancer to evaluate a new targeted radiotherapy.
“It could fill an important need for patients with metastatic prostate cancer resistant to other treatments”commented ASCO 2021 President Dr. Lori J. Pierce, a radiologist at the University of Michigan.
What is it about ? An addition to standard treatment of 177Lu (Luthethium), a radioactive molecule that is linked to a specific marker of prostate tumor cells called prostate-specific membrane antigen (Prostate–specific membrane antigen, PSMA in English).
Result: a winning duo to better destroy tumor cells. According to the results presented this weekend, “this association significantly improved on the one hand the survival without progression of the disease, 8.7 months instead of 3.4, and on the other hand the overall survival, ie 15 against 11 months”, said the co-investigator of this international trial, Dr Michael Morris, oncologist at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in New York (United States).
Gain two and a half years of disease progression-free survival
Another test him European, says PEACE-1, coordinated in France by Prof. Karim Fizazi of the Gustave Roussy Institute (Villejuif), has evaluated other therapeutic combinations in patients with an identical profile, advanced prostate cancer already metastasized at the time of diagnosis.
1,173 men were divided into different groups, including one control, and received, in addition to standard treatment, a new generation hormone therapy, abiraterone (Zytiga, Janssen laboratory), already on the ASCO communications program in 2017. New success this year since this addition made it possible to gain two and a half years of disease-free survival, which went from 2 to 4 and a half years.
Here again, it remains to be shown that overall survival will be much higher in the abiraterone group. Answer maybe in 2022.
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