Pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson reported on Sunday that a late-stage study showed that the use of its prostate cancer drug Erleada (apalutamide) used in conjunction with hormone blocking therapy increased the chances of eliminating the cancer and reduced the risk of disease progression or death. The medicine was applied six months before and after prostate surgery.
According to the company’s statement, patients were nine times more likely to have little or no cancer remaining in the prostate after surgery, with a 20% reduction in the risk of developing metastasis or death and extending the time before patients needed subsequent therapy to more than six years.
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Apalutamide blocks androgenic hormones from binding to the receptor, which may help slow the progression of prostate cancer. It is currently approved for use in advanced prostate cancer, including cases where the disease has spread (metastatic castration-sensitive) or is no longer responding to certain hormonal therapies (non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer).
“Reducing the risk of prostate cancer recurrence and death with better initial treatment regimens has been a long-standing and unmet need for patients with high-risk localized prostate cancer,” said lead researcher Mary-Ellen Taplin, a medical oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School.
Approximately 330,000 people are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year in the US and up to 40% of patients will be classified as high risk. Despite advances in treatment, disease recurrence remains substantial in patients with high-risk advanced prostate cancer.
Up to 50% of patients within five years after surgery relapse and are at significant risk of disease progression and death. More than 36,000 patients are estimated to succumb to prostate cancer by 2026, reinforcing the importance of choosing the best possible therapy early for patients with advanced prostate cancer, the company says.
