Next Step

[Amandaslp78]

Good morning,

I enjoy reading and learning from everyone on this board! My dad (76) has been on this journey with stage 4 metastasized prostate cancer for a little over a year now. He has exhausted the majority of treatments. He has castration-resistant prostate cancer with progression despite abiraterone, enzalutamide, and docetaxel chemotherapy. About 4 months ago, he began treatment with radium-223, and has received 4 of 6 infusions thus far. His alkaline phosphate were about 1500 prior to the start and now they are almost normal. However his PSA remains around 300.

After my dad completes Xofigo, he will require a new CT scan and bone scan for staging purposes. If he has soft-tissue metastases, he might be eligible for the COMBAT trial. Alternatively, he might be a candidate for the VERU-111 clinical trial. My Dad has the somatic TP53 mutation. I still don’t quite understand what that means.

I guess my question is, does anybody know much about these clinical trials? My dad is being treated at Johns Hopkins. Any success with these trials with others in a similar situation? Any advice or feedback would be extremely helpful as we plan for the next step. Thank you!

[Tall_Allen]

P53 is a tumor-suppressor gene, so a mutation in that, which is common in advanced PC, allows tumors to form readily. Unfortunately, there's no therapy for that.

VERU-111 trial is finished after three 21 day cycles, so you can move onto the BAT trial after a couple of months if you do VERU-111 first.

[Amandaslp78 in reply to Tall_Allen]

We are not 100% if we are getting into this trial. We are hoping so. Do you know anybody that has been through it so far? I know it is very new and they only take a certain amount of people. I also can’t find very much on it on the Internet. We were given a handout to read, but that is it. My dad just completed five out of six radium treatments and his alkaline phosphate are close to being normal. His PSA has gone up quite a bit and his pain is increasing as well. His oncologist feels that this would be the best next step for him. Apparently he is not a candidate For immunotherapy right now because of his blood levels due to the radium.