Prostate cancer treatments have been targeting the androgen receptor for over 80 years, and the vast majority of our new treatments also continue to target the androgen receptor.
Prostate cancer treatments have failed to include new classes of treatments when compared to other cancers. Non-small cell lung cancer has approximately seven different classes of treatments; prostate cancer has only four; androgen receptor manipulations, radiation, surgery, and chemotherapies. Prostate cancer treatment options are lagging.
What should we be doing to develop new classes of prostate cancer treatments? It is clear to us at Cancer ABCs that to create new classes of prostate cancer treatments we need to put more effort into molecular phenotyping different types of prostate cancer. We believe that better understanding the underlying molecular structure of prostate cancer will be a gateway towards the development of new classes of prostate cancer treatments.
We call on the research community to try to not only make better our current treatments, but also breakout of just developing treatments in the existing therapy classifications. Prostate cancer needs new types of treatments.
