[tt] NS: Drug breakthrough starves prostate cancers

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Drug breakthrough starves prostate cancers
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg19926664.400&print=true

23 July 2008
Andy Coghlan
Angela Self

AN AGGRESSIVE form of prostate cancer has been stymied by a drug
that stops production of all male sex hormones. The hope is that it
could keep the disease in check for years - today, many men die
within 18 months of starting treatment.

Johann de Bono and colleagues at the Royal Marsden Hospital in
London, together with the UK Institute of Cancer Research and Cougar
Biotechnology, a company in Los Angeles, this week announced results
of a trial of the drug abiraterone in 21 prostate cancer patients
for whom all other treatments had failed.

In eight men with measurable tumours, five shrank, while blood
concentrations of prostate-specific antigen, which is produced by
growing cancers, fell by at least 30 per cent in most men. "All the
patients have cancer that had spread, and we saw the tumours shrink
everywhere," says de Bono (Journal of Clinical Oncology, DOI:
10.1200/JCO.2007.15.9749). He adds that these findings were
replicated in further trials in 250 people though the results are
not yet published.

These studies have confirmed in American men that this drug is
spectacularly effective, says de Bono.

Today, the only reliable therapy for prostate cancer is to
"chemically castrate" men using drugs that stop the testes making
testosterone. Yet in many cases, the tumours simply start making
testosterone themselves.

Abiraterone dodges this problem by penetrating all cell types and
disabling an enzyme vital for producing testosterone and other
hormones that drive tumour growth. "The drug blocks the ability of
cancers to make the 'fertiliser' for the cancer seeds to grow," says
de Bono.

Abiraterone could be available in two years if a trial in 1200
people is successful.

Cancer - Learn more about one of the worlds biggest killers in our
comprehensive special report.

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Weblinks

Abiraterone, Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiraterone
The Royal Marsden Hospital
http://www.royalmarsden.nhs.uk/rmh
Institute of Cancer Research
http://www.icr.ac.uk/
Cougar Biotechnology
http://www.cougarbiotechnology.com/