PSA Velocity, Questions to Ask Your Doctor, Nanoparticle Drug Delivery and Xofigo Review and Video.

I come across numerous smaller articles of interest related to prostate cancer. Rather than summarizing them in separate blog posts, I’d like to send this short list of four. Hopefully, one or more will be of interest to you.

1) On June 5th, 2013, the Johns Hopkins Health Alerts published a short article entitled “What We Can Learn by Measuring PSA Velocity.” It addresses the role of the rate of PSA change in prostate cancer diagnostics, progression, treatment and outcomes.

2) The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) has published a free pamphlet entitled “Questions to Ask Your Doctor About Prostate Cancer.” The pamphlet also contains spaces to fill in the answers to such important questions. See the following link.

3) Xofigo (alpha-radin, radium-223 chloride) was approved in 2013 to treat men with metastatic prostate cancer which had spread to the bone.  Results from a recent study demonstrating improved survival and better quality of life were published in the New England Journal of Medicine with an accompanying video describing the drug. See the following link to the July 31st issue of the Prostate Cancer Foundation NewsPulse.

4) Nanoparticles are chemical species which can serve as a targeted delivery system for drugs, proteins and other therapeutics. The drug to be delivered is contained within the nanoparticle whose surface is then coated with targeting moieties such as antibodies. The overall result is the delivery of a specific drug directly to the cancer cells thereby allowing for higher localized doses and minimized systemic side effects. This type of delivery system for docetaxel (taxotere) is given as an example in a video and accompanying article from the July 31st Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCF) NewsPulse. Docetaxel is a chemotherapy used in metastatic, hormone-refractory prostate cancer patients. While it is efficacious, it also can produce serious side effects. It is also limited in the amount of drug which can be administered intravenously. Therefore, nanoparticle delivery can be much more efficacious.