Dr. Yu on the Future of Castration-Sensitive Prostate Cancer

Evan Y. Yu, MD, professor, Department of Medicine, Division of Oncology, University of Washington, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, discusses the future of castration-sensitive prostate cancer.

Treatment for castration-sensitive disease has garnered a lot of excitement, says Yu. When it comes to treating patients with castration-sensitive disease, the challenge is clinical trial development. This is a good challenge to have, explains Yu, because the prognosis is good—these patients live for years. Because of that, it takes a long time for the data to mature.

The more immediate developments that are being made in the field are the use of immunotherapy agents such as PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies, as well as patient selection for those agents. The introduction of PARP inhibitors for homologous recombination-deficient patients has also received a lot of press.

Physicians have yet to work out if combining immunotherapy agents with PARP inhibitors is a viable strategy moving forward, notes Yu. However, he states that these approaches are all being tested in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer, and physicians are likely to receive an answer soon.