Is somatostatin an anticancer drug?

[Claud68]

My husband was operated in 1996, 2000 and 2003 for a thymoma, and had two times RT after the first and the second treatment. The control CT were ok until 2020, he had only very small encapsulated nodules.

But then he's got a prostate cancer in 2018. In 2018, November, he was operated for a Gleason 9 prostate cancer, and 11.8 PSA . His PSA was still 2,45 5 weeks after the surgery .

So he had 3 Lu177 treatments in 2019 because there were 6 mets on pelvic lymphnods.

In 2020, June he had a choline petscan: it showed nothing for the prostate cancer but two new big pleural metastases (8.7 cm and 5 cm) and a smaller one.

So he underwent a Ga68 psma petscan to know if the mets were from th prostate, but they didn't absorb Ga68, so they were from the thymoma.

Bu they found also a new bone met from prostate on the left border from the C7 cervical.

They will remove it soon with the cyber knife (stereotactic RT), but for the thymoma mets they can only make a very very dangerous surgery because the mets are behind an area where my husband was yet operated three times.

Now it would be possible to shrink these mets only with Somatostatin. They do it in Germany when there are no more options for surgery or RT.

Many of the skilled contributors in this forum explained that some statins are also very effective against prostate cancer too.

I would be very grateful if you could help us to find a good solution, maybe for both cancers together?

Claud

[pjoshea13]

Somatostatin - aka growth hormone-inhibiting hormone - would seem to be of value against cancer.

Apologies for dumping this on you, but the following 18 PubMed hits contains some trials that might interest you:

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?te...

-Patrick

[CrocodileShoes in reply to pjoshea13]

Patrick, I'm on Atorvastatin. Would it be worth asking to replace it with somostatin?

[pjoshea13 in reply to CrocodileShoes]

Somatostatin does not inhibit HMG-CoA reductase, which is how the familiar 'statin' drugs reduce cholesterol production.

-Patrick

[Tall_Allen]

It is not usually of any value for prostate cancer, but it is useful for neuroendocrine cancers of the digestive tract. The important thing to find out is whether the metastases express somatostatin. This can be determined by an IHC stain of the tumor tissue using STRSS2. If positive, he may get a good response from octreotide (or similar somatostatin analogue). He may also be able to get a drug called Lutathera (Lu-177-DOTATATE). If the staining is negative, it will be useless.

[Claud68]

Thank you very much for the interesting replies!

Thymoma stage IVa is very unknown and rare, my husband is a miraculous survivor for 24 years (17 years would be the maximum he could expect), and there are no options in France except a very dangerous 4th surgery.

So unfortunately the statins you can take for prostate cancer are not the same kind of medication for thymoma, unless the PCa would be a neuro endocrine one.

With your helpful informations I'll check to find out more, maybe where are hospitals offering less dangerous treatments eventually with somatostatin or trials.

[Purpled in reply to Claud68]

Hi, I was two user a member of e Thymoma support group on Facebook. They have a wealth of information and people of all stages of treatment they have been a god send to me.

[Claud68 in reply to Purpled]

Thank you for this advice!

[immunity1]

Somatostatin analogues are only used for PC where there is evidence of neuroendocrine tumour involvement. And this is theorised to be present in patients who have had protracted therapies such as ADT. An inital blood test for chromogranin A may point you in the right direction