Hang in there -- its happening

[George71]

eurekalert.org/pub_releases...

The innovative drug was more effective than the modern hormone treatments abiraterone and enzalutamide at slowing down the growth and spread of prostate cancer in patients with advanced disease.

Prior results from the PROfound trial published earlier this year led to olaparib's approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) - making it one of the first genetically targeted drugs available for prostate cancer.

The trial had already reported an improvement in disease development and outcome for this group of men with DNA repair faults in their tumours - but the final results published at this stage offer a longer follow-up and conclusively demonstrate an improvement in survival for men who were given olaparib.

[6357axbz]

So George, do I understanding this correctly that the only people this helps are those with that rare genetic defect?

[George71 in reply to 6357axbz]

Yes, it would appear so ...BUT it is likely many high risk patients with mets outside the local area have some sort of mutation if you get tested.

"Men whose tumours had genetic changes were assigned to two groups: one group for those with changes in BRCA1, BRCA2 or ATM, and another group for men with genetic changes in any other of the DNA repair genes studied. Men were then randomly assigned to olaparib or standard hormone therapy."

[6357axbz in reply to George71]

Why select such a statistically small population? Why did the not run the trial with the majority of patients, i.e., those of us without these genetic defects?

[snoraste]

Thanks George. Absolute numbers are still pretty small.

[George71]

As far as I can tell -- Olaparib does not cut off testosterone and that is a huge plus. You can't get CRPC on Olaparib.

It is possible it has a benefit to people without mutations just not as much.

I'm sure they will start combining it with other immuno drugs soon and get even better results