A new study from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has found that treating prostate cancer early, before it spreads widely, can make a big difference.
The research, published in The Lancet Oncology, shows that metastasis-directed therapy (MDT) can delay the disease’s progression in men with a specific type of prostate cancer called oligometastatic prostate cancer.
Oligometastatic cancer means that the cancer has started to spread, but not too far. It falls between localized cancer and widely metastatic cancer. Because not many patients have this form of the disease, and because it grows more slowly than other types, it has been hard to gather strong proof of which treatments work best.
That’s why this new study is important. Led by Dr. Chad Tang and his team, the researchers brought together data from all available randomized clinical trials involving MDT in this setting.
They formed a global team called X-MET and combined patient data from seven separate trials into one large study, which they named WOLVERINE. In total, 574 men were included in the analysis.
The results clearly showed that MDT worked better than standard treatment alone. Most patients in the study received a type of MDT called stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT), which uses highly focused radiation to treat the tumors.
Those who received MDT had more time before their disease got worse, before it showed up again on scans, and before it became resistant to hormone treatments.
More specifically, patients who got MDT had a delay of 7.6 months in overall disease progression, 4.9 months in radiographic progression (as seen on imaging tests), and 2.5 months in the development of castration-resistant disease, which is harder to treat. These benefits were seen across all the individual trials and in the overall data.
What’s also important is that the treatment did not come with extra risks. There were no grade five side effects, which are the most serious, and both groups of patients—those with and without MDT—had similar numbers of side effects rated above grade two. This shows that MDT did not add new safety concerns.
Until now, many doctors have used MDT for oligometastatic prostate cancer based on promising early results, but without strong level one evidence. This study changes that. It provides the best proof so far that MDT helps, and it does so safely.
The researchers hope this new information will lead to more studies and, eventually, to treatments that can help patients live longer. While this study did not yet prove that MDT increases overall survival, it lays the foundation for future research to answer that question.
In conclusion, this study shows that targeting prostate cancer early—while it is still in the oligometastatic stage—using precise radiation therapy can slow the disease without adding serious side effects. This approach offers hope to many men and may shape how prostate cancer is treated in the future.
If you care about prostate cancer, please read studies about 5 types of bacteria linked to aggressive prostate cancer, and new strategy to treat advanced prostate cancer.
For more information about prostate cancer, please see recent studies about new way to lower risk of prostate cancer spread, and results showing three-drug combo boosts survival in metastatic prostate cancer.
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